Annual Thanksgiving Road Trip: Exploring Arkansas R.V.: Day 3 - Mining For Diamonds & RV Life & Heading North

Waking up to brush my teeth and wash some dishes outside, while the boys cooked breakfast. So fun! Then it was off for a big day of mining. Today was going to be the day we found a diamond and Carter was sure of it. We'd choose a random, lucky spot in the field (keeping our eye on where yesterday's 1 carat couple was sneaking off to get dirt), shoveled dirt in a bucket, carried it to one of the water stations and started the process of wet sifting with our double stacked sifters. You would get the gravel clean in the cold, muddy water and eventually down into the finest mesh sifter and Carter and Addison would do this quarter turn final process getting everything spread out and do one last flip onto the wooden table. Based on this process, all the heavier and larger rocks would in the center of the flipped pile. It was the real deal and we learned so much about the process. Around 1PM, after nearly 5 hours of wet sifting, everyone was hungry, so we hosed off all the mud and took our finds to the on-hand gemologist and had her look at our rocks. Addison found an abnormally large piece of heart shaped quartz. There was Jasper, agate, mica, barite, calcite and the black lamproite which is the volcanic material that makes up the field. Funny Story: Delaney was certain she had found a diamond and was excited to have it checked out. When the lady got to it, she was told it was a random piece of concrete. There is no doubt these 3 kids will understand the value of a diamond when they, one day, go buy one or are given one.

The girls showered while we leisurely cleaned and packed up, excited to get to our next stop before dark. Well, with a 2.5 hour drive and the sun setting in Arkansas at 4:59, that didn't happen but made arriving in Jean Petit State Park after dark and finding our campsite a fun adventure. We set up camp, "tried" to start a fire, this time with fire starter, ate dinner, played laser tag outside and told ghost stories. When it got chilly, we headed inside and stuffed Christmas cards and turned on the first Harry Potter movie. Favorite memory - Carter giving a play by play of the entire movie to make sure that everyone understood the confusing parts.