On Digging It

We went to the Crater of Diamond State Park with our Cub Scouts this weekend to camp and try our luck at mining diamonds.   It’s a two hour drive there from Little Rock, and a beautiful drive. We ended up with just three families camping on Friday, but had four more join us to dig on Saturday.  For those of you who don’t know, the park is the only place IN THE WORLD where diamond digging is open the the general public. 

 Searching for Diamonds

 Digging is much harder than you’d think.  There is a lot of mica,
quartz, jasper, and calcite that confuses you and makes you think you’ve
struck it rich.  I found some pretty green rocks I thought might be
jade, but were volcanic ash!  It makes for great geology lessons and Cub
Scouts 
can earn lots of goodies like: Geology beltloop and pin,
family travel requirements,  Webelos Geology pin requirements, and lots
more.  

Sifting and Washing

The boys loved getting dirty (but not so much getting hot) so we treated them with a trip to the little water park right outside the digging field.  I think that was the highlight for them!

Cooling Off in the Waterpark

Some hints:  If you go with a large group they give great rates.  We only paid $1.81 for the kids and $3 for adults to dig.  You can take wagons, tools, screens, coolers, from home.  If you don’t want to cart all that they also rent everything you can hope for there and have a restaurant where you can rest.  Take swimsuits if you want to get the kids clean before going home!

Sundays in My City

New Murals On the River Trail

Max on the “Secret Trail” He Found- We met the artist that designed the mural above while exploring!

One of The Many Monsters in Town

You Never Know Who’s Looking

Rock Monster

Pretty Cliffs

Mimosa In Bloom (They remind me of Panama)

My Guys By the Arkansas River

Let It Snow!

We get snow for a day or two at the most here in central AR so everyone goes crazy when it happens.  
The news had promises of snow for this morning and nothing happened.  (Well, except for rush for milk and bread at the grocery stores!)  Snow was actually all around us on the radar.   The kids were pretty disappointed and decided they should do a “snow dance” to help the clouds move this way.
So, about two hours ago…
Snow Jumping on a Trampoline!
Happy Dog!

Someone Already Wiped Out

Snowy Day
Wonder if there will be enough to make Snow Candy like last year?
Snow Candy Like Laura’s

Father’s Day Fun

We celebrated Father’s Day by serving daddy-o breakfast in bed, then going to the Old Mill, a park close to our house.  (It was seen in the opening of Gone With the Wind for you trivia buffs.)  It was way too hot to stay long, so came back and everyone is swimming…

Unknown Mami