Crater of Diamonds State Park, AR

We decided on Monday to go north into Oklahoma and then to Arkansas instead of continuing through Texas.  The route from Oklahoma into Arkansas had bigger roads and since we felt we had done small-town Texas, we thought we'd check out small-town Oklahoma.

One of the first things we saw in Oklahoma was a convention center that was advertising the "Purina Coon Hunt."  I snapped a blurry picture out the window at Kristian's insistence.  We also passed a Wherehauser factory, several lumber factories and a Remington factory.  Much to his disappointment, Kristian drove past the Remington factory.

We stopped in Bokchito, OK for breakfast at Frank's Grocery, Gas & Cafe.  The girls wanted to know why their breakfast was served with biscuits and gravy.  The only other customers was a table of 6 farmers... who had to leave pretty soon to help Bobby Joe get his tractor out of the ditch.  After breakfast, we pulled up to the gas pump to fill the tank.  Kristian went inside to give the attendant (an older man who was wearing only overalls) our credit card.  "I'd like to fill up on pump 1..."  "Well go ahead then son..."  Apparently in rural OK, you pump FIRST and then pay... a novel idea for us poor city folk.

We arrived at the Crater of Diamonds State Park in Arkansas just after lunch.  We were able to set up camp and then check out the visitor's center and the Diamond field.  I even drove back up into Murfreesboro to do some grocery shopping.  When I got to the store, the only town police officer was chewing tobacco outside the door.  Kristian grilled some steaks and we had a great dinner.  The girls were playing with some boys from the next campsite over in the surrounding woods and having a great time.  Eventually they heard we were from California and so came over to talk to Kristian.  They asked questions about how far we had come and where we were going next and living near the beach.  Then the 9 yo announced "We have 177 acres, how many acres yall got?"  Kristian just looked at him, and so he said "What? 1 acre?  Do yall know what an acre is?"  Kristian tried to explain that property in California isn’t really measured by the acre, but we don't think he understood. 

We got up early to be at the Diamond field when it opened.  The "crater" is really just a plowed field that contains limestone and volcanic ash from a long dormant volcano.  It also contains quartz, barite, jasper, amethyst and diamonds.  The trick is sifting through the dirt and finding the valuable stones.  The diamonds are supposed to shine in the sunlight.  People find about 5-7 diamonds a day, but only 4-5 diamonds a year are of a valuable weight.

We dug and sifted and sluiced (sluicing in basically washing the dirt off small bits of gravel and rock) and examined and dug and sifted and sluiced and ended up with some pretty jasper, and bits of quartz and barite and so around 4pm we gave up and went back to camp to get cleaned up.  One guy did find a 1.3 carat pink diamond that day though, but, no diamonds for us :(