A Diamond in the Rough

Or not! It turns out we are super good at finding "not diamonds." In fact, we have a whole bag full of pretty "not diamonds." 

Some context: in school we've read about a place in the U.S. that you can mine for diamonds in the crater of an old volcano, and if you find gems, you get to keep them! Upon further research, we discovered this place was only about an hour's drive from where we were staying. With six of us looking, and a diamond or two a day discovered on average, we thought we had this gig in the bag. 

First stop: Donuts! We needed a good start to our adventure that no breakfast we might make ourselves would provide (well, we just wanted to get on the road and that was the fastest option, plus donuts and vacation seem like they go together).

Second stop: Crater of Diamonds State Park . . . we missed the ranger-led program about how to find the diamonds, but thought, "How hard can it be?" We paid our entrance fees, put down our massive deposits ($20 deposit for a $4 shovel), and with our expensive rental gear claimed our own little patch of dirt. That's when things got tricky. It wasn't dusty dirt, it was compacted dirt. Mud, really. So Brennen and I headed off with a 5-gallon (rental) bucket of dirt to the washing station. The water was ice cold and the process a little obscure. We watched an old guy wash his rocks, and he (recognizing we were newbies) watched us wash our rocks (he realized we had no clue what we were looking for, so he just might see something we didn't . . . he did not share helpful tips; this is how I know he was looking to move in on our claim, lol :)

After an hour or so, we were basically laying around in our dirt patch, watching other people and thinking about lunch. We sent the kids off to have our collection of shiny things analyzed by the professionals who said, "You found crystal and jasper," (I think it was jasper? unless jasper is worth something, and in that case it definitely wasn't, hahaha), while Buck and collected our mining gear. It turns out that we, in fact, were the treasure for the state of Arkansas diamond mine, as we paid more money than any other experience of our trip to dig holes in their dirt. Tricky, Arkansas. Very tricky. I see what you did there! Lol :)

Third stop: we decided to drive into Hot Springs National Park to visit the tower and its painfully expensive gift shop. Buck and I got a small discount (thanks to our soon-to-expire national park pass) on our "tokens" to ride the elevator to the top of the observation tower, but the children decided to take the stairs--the 360 stairs on the outside of the giant, windy tower!! But they made it to the top okay, legs burning, and opted for the elevator ride on the way back down :) The tower for sure swayed in the wind; I didn't care for that so much. We were dusty and dirty, but it didn't matter because we were tourists in Arkansas, lol. Back to the van, then back to the house we went.

It was still light enough and warm enough for the kids to try some more kayaking back at the rental house. Brennen even set up a concert on the dock for the boaters, but dinner got done too quickly, so he had to break up the band (of one ;)