Spring Break:Crater of Diamonds State Park

On Friday of Spring Break week, we got up early and drove four hours to Arkansas to the Crater of Diamonds State Park. This park is open to the public to dig and pan for crystals and diamonds. We arrived at the park at 10:00 a.m and stayed all day. It was overcast but the day was pretty warm. We rented our gear and listened to a demonstration on the proper way to pan in the water. Then we walked out to the field, picked our spot and began to dig.

Jacob decided to start his own hole a little bit away from the rest of us. I sat on my chair and took pictures of everyone else doing the hard work.

He's looking really hard for diamonds. Most of the diamonds are really tiny and it's hard to distinguish between a diamond and other crystals.

Analee and Sam were pretty good partners. We had two five gallon buckets that we filled up with dirt and took to the watering tables to sift through. There are professional diamond hunters who are at the diamond fields every week. Once a month, the fields get plowed to turn the dirt over to make diamond hunting easier.

After awhile, we picked up and moved to a completely different spot with softer dirt. By this time, the sun was out and it was pretty hot. We all got a bit sunburned. Analee is sifiting through some of her dirt at the water tables. It was easy to strike up conversations with the other people around.

Kyle and Sam are using a knife blade to try to pick out the tiny crystals that might be diamonds.

He's just plain awsome. What a great dad.

We certainly didn't come away richer for our efforts but we had a such a good time. We didn't find any diamonds or crystals worth taking but we took several pretty rocks home. We took Buddy with us again and he is so cute that we had several people come up to ask if they could pet him. We drove back that night and got home around 10:00. The next day was Saturday and it was spent cleaning the inside and outside of the van and just relaxing. Next time, we will have to plan earlier and go to several different fields and see other sites.