Here I am back in the hotel room in Murfeesboro, Arkansas after spending the day at Crater of Diamonds State Park.  I am tired, hot and very, very, very dirty, but had a wonderful time hunting diamonds.  Did I have any luck?  You guys just didn't concentrate hard enough on Diamonds for me.  No diamonds were found.  I did find several pieces of shiny quartz and a couple of small pieces of glass.

It was the process that was fun though.  In loading the pictures taken today, something happened and I lost some of them. Oh, well, I'm not a very pretty sight at the moment anyway.  In one of the pictures, I was "sluicing" or washing my dirt looking for any diamonds that may have been dug up and not visible on the surface of a clod of dirt.  It was a hot day, but I tried to stay in the shade as much as possible and did some of the washing of dirt in a small sluicing area that was down close to my "dig" site and in the shade.  I even took a short nap on the bench of a picnic table after eating my lunch. Tomorrow it is only supposed to be in the mid-70's so those digging tomorrow should have a better day than I had today.

There was a young family with 4 small boys at my shady sluicing area and the smallest one was a hoot.  He was maybe 2 1/2 years old and had a plastic colander with holes in it.  He found that if he put it into the washing trough and picked it up, water would pour out all the holes and make a big splashing sound.  He was cracking up.  Into the water went the colander,up it came, water splashing everywhere, and the little boy just giggling.  He did this over and over until his Mom turned to see what was so funny and stopped all his fun.  I was enjoying his antics.  Someday, he may be a world famous geologist and it all will have started at the sluice box at Crater of Diamonds playing with his colander in the water.

Crater of Diamonds State Park, Murfeesboro, Arkansas.

Crater of Diamonds plowed field where you can find diamonds by spotting them just lying on top of the dirt, by dry sifting the dirt or by sluicing with water.  This picture was taken about 8 AM and only a few people were out on the field. I was in the far left corner in the shade of the big trees in an area where several decent sized diamonds have been found, one last June and one last week.  By noon, there were many more people on the field.  I hope they had more luck than I did.  I know they didn't have any more fun than I did.  Some people come and stay a month in the RV/campground and hunt diamonds every day.  It is great family fun at the park.  Ed Hilbush, you are just lucky you didn't have to haul all my diamonds home for me.

My finds were glass and quartz.  I was pretty sure that was the case, but it was worth having my suspicions confirmed by the park staff.

Tomorrow we head toward Camden, Arkansas, working our way east.