Arkansas

We stopped first at Arkansas Post, a trading post that had been active from the 1600's to the 1870's.  Honestly there wasn't much to see since it was built on the river, and the river had changed course several times and washed everything away.  But we did enjoy a nice 2 mile hike around the property, Arkansas just has a unique beauty to it that we really love.  (Seriously)

Then we stopped at the one site that isn't new to us, Crater of the Diamonds State park in Murfreesboro.  We went there when Doug was taking paternity leave after Ian was born.  Who is crazy enough to go on a road trip in February with a 5 week old baby?  Apparently, we were.  This time we were determined to find a diamond.  We started out in the diamond field just digging in the mud, this is the best way to find big diamonds, we were told (1 carat +).  Soon, we realized that since it was almost 100 degrees, we would rather be in working in the water troughs in the shade.  Basically the procedure is this, you fill a bucket full of dirt, bring it to the trough and dump a shovelful of dirt in the top of your two screens.  The first one with larger holes, the second with smaller holes.    The top screen just gets out the big rocks, then you rock the bottom screen back and forth, turn it, rock it, turn, rock, until all the heavy rocks are settled in the middle.  Then you flip it over onto a table and look through the pebbles in the bottom to see if there is a shiny mettalic one that doesn't have any dirt stuck to it, that is a diamond.  We spent about 5 hours there, until we were ready to move on.  About 600 diamonds are found there a year, most by "professionals" that spend all their time looking for a selling diamonds.  Ian had the most fun, playing in the mud in a big puddle in the pavilion.