Shopping and Home & Garden Tours
A third excursion at the Going On Faith Conference will be a shopping trip and sightseeing tour. The main stop will be at the new Outlets of Little Rock. This is the first outlet center in Arkansas and has many nationally known stores and factory outlets. At this open-air shopping destination, store operators offer savings of up to 70 percent.
Next, the delegates who choose this tour will return to downtown Little Rock and visit the Esse Purse Museum and Store in the South Main Historic District. The museum is lovingly dedicated to the evolution of 20th-century American women through the bags they carried and their contents. “A purse is not just a utilitarian bag in which a woman carries her necessities,” said owner Anita Davis. “It is an extension of her personal space, her essence and the other things that make her ‘her.’”
The museum explores concepts of history, art and the feminine mystique. “This place has been written up in a number of national and international publications and is just one of three such museums in the world dedicated to the purse and the women who carry them,” said the CVB’s Mayner.
The fourth afternoon trip around the city is a home and garden tour. There are a number of garden and lifestyle personalities and experts living in the Little Rock area, among them TV’s gardening authority P. Allen Smith. Another prominent gardening professional is Chris Olsen. He has carefully restored the Edgemont House in the Historic Park Hill neighborhood across the river in North Little Rock. It is a private, palatial garden estate and Olsen’s home. It was constructed in 1927 and is listed on the National Historic Register. This Spanish Colonial house has a beautiful view of the Little Rock skyline. The Edgemont House is also available for corporate functions, private receptions and photo sessions.
The Old Mill, also in North Little Rock, is a city park and an authentic reproduction of an old water-powered grist mill. The structure can be found in the opening scenes of the classic 1939 movie “Gone With the Wind.” The park features many sculptures and a tree-branch-entwined bridge. Mexican sculptor and artist Dionico Rodriguez created or oversaw each piece, as well as the foot bridges and rustic seats. The Old Mill is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Heifer International has another outdoor attraction — the Heifer Urban Farm — and it is part of the garden tour. This is a three-acre multipurpose garden behind Heifer’s stunning headquarters building. It has grown from a modest community garden into a much larger operation that provides fresh food for several food networks in the area. Heifer applies eco-friendly agriculture practices in its fields and stockyards. Visitors will meet chickens, pigs, alpacas, goats and other animals that are helping families around the world feed themselves and their families as they, in turn, pass on legacy animal offspring to others with similar need in their village or town.
Register now for Going On Faith by calling 800-628-0993 or go to www.gofconference.com.
