My day began at 3:30 am when my insane husband woke me up. He likes to start road trips super early, as usual, so I obliged although I had only been asleep for 4.5 hours. To be fair though, we needed to be through Dallas before the morning commute traffic clogged up the interstate so it worked out quite well. I went to sleep in the car, and when I woke up an hour and 45 minutes later we were stopping in Sulphur Springs so we could potty and Kate could eat some breakfast.
From there we headed to Texarkana, where we were originally going to meet up with Dad, Jason, Heather and the kids. They were a bit behind us since they didn't leave super early like we did, and Nick and I were both getting hungry since it had been a few hours since we ate breakfast, so we stopped at Cracker Barrel to eat while we waited. We then decided to just meet at the Crater of Diamonds State Park instead, so we left Cracker Barrel and headed there.
I have never been to dig for diamonds before. Actually Pop was the only one with any previous diamond hunting experience. We rented a basic kit from the visitors center and walked out into the diamond field: 37 acres of dirt and volcanic rock.
It had rained a couple of days before we arrived, so dry sifting was not going to work out very well as the dirt hadn't completely dried out yet. That left us with wet sifting, which we tried out for quite a while. The kids mostly dug around in the dirt and picked up pretty rocks, since they didn't really understand what it was that they were looking for.
It was hot. There is pretty much no shade anywhere out there to get a break from the sun. I am not totally thrilled with digging in dirt and getting filthy, so I thought I was choosing the smarter option by volunteering to wet sift but I ended up even dirtier than had I stayed out and dug.
This photo pretty much sums up Crater of Diamonds State Park:
We ended up staying for a couple of hours because once you get started, it's a little bit difficult to pull yourself away. Jason was determined, and I was kind of enjoying the wet sifting, so the only thing that really made us want to leave was that everyone was starving and they have nowhere to eat out there. Food trumps diamonds, in this case.
We drove into Murfreesboro and ate at a local place, Em's Cafe. It was delicious! Then we headed on to Lake Catherine State Park, which is where the house we rented for the week is located. We arrived and everyone started exploring the house and backyard. We unpacked, and then Heather, Kylie and I prepared a grocery list for the week and we went into town to Walmart. Nick, Jason, and the little kids walked around the neighborhood and played Pokemon for a bit while we were gone. We are now set for the week and prepared to have some fun!
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