Crater of Diamonds State Park
Crater of Diamonds State Park
Deep in rural Arkansas, there’s a state park that allows visitors to bring their buckets, wagons, sifters, and shovels, and spend their day mining for diamonds. After paying an entrance fee to the park, any gems found on the site can be kept free of charge.
The line was out the door on the day that we arrived with eager looking kids and adults ready with their tools in hand. Those who were planning to stay all day had also packed themselves a lunch and brought along plenty of water.
The campground we stayed out was only a few miles from the state park. As a courtesy for staying at the campground, they gave us free use of the tools we would need for mining. She even gave us a quick demonstration of how to use them.
We got to work combing the upper layers of the old volcanic site. We would scoop shovels of dirt into the buckets and take them to the washing stations to start sifting through them.
In much the same way you would sift for gold, the layers of clay, rocks, and gravel had to be washed away to reach the smaller particle layer that contain the diamonds.
After hours of digging, sifting, and washing, we took our few pebbles to the inspection station for identification. We ended up not finding any diamonds, but we did find a lot of calcite, jade, and quartz.
Murfreesboro RV Park
We arrived late at night to Murfreesboro. Since it was after hours, we pulled up to the office and grabbed our paper for late arrivals. We backed up into our site and set up. The next morning, we checked in with the lady in the office, paid for our site and was told to come by whenever we wanted a demonstration of how to use the diamond mining equipment.
The equipment is free to use, just have to make sure it stays in good condition and no one else takes it while you’re mining.
We had no problem with the utilities and the campground was rather quiet except for a few cars that would pass by along the road.
When we left, she came out to meet us and waved goodbye. Good southern hospitality!
Starlink gave us 129 down and 13 up. We had 5 bars on the Verizon phones (105/49) and 5 bars with the cell antenna (73/35). AT&T was 4 bars with the cell antenna (25/21). The Wifi was unusable due to a constantly dropping connection, but we did receive 5 bars.