Hunting for diamonds

Paved trail to the river

The road from the interstate to the Crater of Diamonds goes through rural southern Arkansas and for the most part it looked like a place lost in time. I doubt it has changed much in the last 40 years. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but it made the state park a big surprise. This is one of the nicest campgrounds we have ever been in and one of only three that we have given our highest rating. It’s in a beautiful old growth forest but everything is brand new and very well done. Paved streets and parking pads, well spaced campsites and full utility hookups. The only thing missing is cable TV, something you rarely get in a state park, but something that would be a big plus here. This is the first time in nine years of RVing that we have no TV reception. There is one fuzzy analog channel that appears to be a video broadcast of a talk radio program. It’s not a big thing with us, we don’t watch that much TV, there is very little worth watching nowadays. We go thru the $5 DVD bin at Wal-Mart and keep stocked up on movies to watch at night.

We got up early this morning and went straight to the diamond fields before it got hot. Even though we watched all the instructional videos at the visitors center, and rented all the proper equipment our efforts were fruitless. It’s a lot harder than it looks and is indeed like finding a needle in a haystack. I told Millie metal detecting on the beach was a lot more rewarding. When you dig a hole targeted with a detector you always find something, junk jewelry, coins, beer tabs, something. Here in the diamond field we dug holes, sifted dirt, searched the surface of the ground and came home with nothing. But it was an interesting experience; we had fun and checked another item off the bucket list.