Diamond Hunting

Diamond hunting… now who’d-a-thunk that was possible just an hour from the house.  Well, Jenia and I found out on Friday when we went to Crater of Diamonds State Park a few miles from Murfreesboro, AR.  http://www.craterofdiamondsstatepark.com

Just the drive there was quite beautiful.  When I think of Arkansas I kind of think of shacks in the rural parts and not much else.  But when you travel the back roads, as we did on Friday, you become entranced with the beauty of the countryside.  Sure, there are the rural shacks and the cars scattered in the yard, but when you look at the other side of the road you see some beautiful countryside with huge trees and the occasional small stream. 

I commented while we were driving that this trip surely qualified as part of my blog of “back road traveling.” Fortunately the Garmin GPS took us on the round-about roads and that was fine with us because we got to see so much of the rural area. Had we taken the interstate and then the county roads, we would have missed much of the lovely scenery.

When we arrived at the state park, there were a few cars in the parking lot but not totally filled.  The day was great for scrounging in the dirt: overcast with a slight breeze and the temps in the low 70’s.  A wind-breaker jacket was perfect.  Of course I wore a pair of light-colored pants which turned out to get a bit dirty but nothing that washing won’t cure.

We rented a bucket, shovel and shifter and set out to find our diamonds.  Since about the early 1920’s there have been over 75,000 diamonds found at this volcanic crater which covers over 37 acres.  Along with diamonds being found, other semi-precious stones include amethyst, agate, jasper, quartz, calcite and barite… some of which we did find.

Sitting on the clay-like ground did nothing for my pants but did a lot for my psyche.  It was rather calming and stress-reducing to just sit there, look at the ground and shift thru dirt to see if we could come up with anything interesting.  We did find several fun things including a stone that Jenia turned up.  After discussing it with one of the resident geologists, we found that it was about 80 to 90 million years old.  Don’t remember the actual name, but the geologist called it a “swamp stone.”

The process is kind of easy:  you check a section of the ground.  Shift thru the dirt and put anything you want to keep in the bucket.  Then you take it to the water shed where you use the shifter to clean the dirt and see if you’ve come up with anything worthwhile.  You can take home as much as a 5-gallon bucket, on a daily basis, filled with whatever stones you want.

We sat / stooped / kneeled and filled our bucket with a few things.  It was fun at the water shed cause you got a chance to see what you wound up with and a chance to clean your hands after all that playing in the dirt.  I mentioned to Jenia that it would probably be more fun had we come there a day or so after a good rain.  Not only would the ground have been easier to dig in but we might have been able to get really deep into the ground and find something exciting.  But our day was well spent in any case.

After we cleaned our finds and took everything back to the park center, we checked out the rest of the area.  There is a small water park just as you enter the diamond center.  We thought this would be fun the next time we come back with Stasia.  After we finish digging, we can get into our swimsuits and cool off with some fun at the water park.  We are going to bring a lunch and enjoy the whole day with diamond digging, swimming and a picnic lunch.

Altho we didn’t find anything of monetary value, we had fun, found an interesting area to revisit and enjoyed a few hours of stress-reducing fun.