Crater of Diamonds State Park

 

All the camping gear 😍😍😍😍.  I really love camping gear and sewing and kitchen gadgets.   Yep, I'm a huge sucker for all that stuff.  But anyway, this was me prepping for the awesome canoe camping trip I had planned to go on the Buffalo River from Kyle's Landing or Ponca to Pruitt Landing, and I had all these hikes planned, like Indian Creek Trail to Eye of the Needle, Triple Falls Trail, and Hemmed in Hollow via the Goat Trail.  (I'm sharing all this so I know what I want to do if I ever get the chance again.)  BUT THEN, it was like crazy cold which never happens and was snowing in Arkansas.  Again, ridiculous for March.   So we pivoted and went further south in Arkansas to Crater of Diamonds State Park and Lake Ouachita.  I tried to convince everyone to go even further to Louisiana and float Bayou Bartholomew, but I made the fatal mistake of mentioning alligators and then only Sebastian would support my plan.  😒 We wouldn't have had as much time there anyway because of the longer drive, but it would have been epic.  

So anyway, we went to the famous Crater of Diamonds and quickly realized that none of us had the patience for panning or mining or whatever you want to call it.  But it was pretty fun to let the kids dig in the dirt for the afternoon and the campground was pretty.  We had planned on a different campground but we drove by it and it was so not appealing, just kind of trashy trailer park-ish.  So I felt super blessed that the state park still had some first come first serve tent sites open.  

Panning for diamonds.

It still was quite chilly and the water was cold!

Digging away.

They just rake over the ground every couple weeks or something. Anyway, it's kind of wild that so many diamonds are found.  But once I realized how difficult they are to spot, especially without panning them in the water, I kind of just relaxed in the dirt.  😂

Our pretty tent sites.