Crater of Diamonds State Park

For years Jordan and I have wanted to go to Crater of Diamonds state park in Arkansas

And finally on one of our drives across the country we drove through Arkansas!

So we took a day detour and went to the world's only public diamond mine!

That's right! PUBLIC DIAMOND MINE!

That means, what you find.... YOU KEEP!

There was a 40 CARAT DIAMOND FOUND THERE!

... not by us...

but still, the chance is there!

You just go in... and dig, or walk around (because they till every once in a while and the rain will flush the hard rocks up!)

We chose digging and got right to work!

Then Jordan would clean what we dug up in the troughs of water

(Makayla took this picture, almost perfect... but i love her little finger in the corner!)

Then sift the smaller pieces out and lay them out to dry so we could search for the diamonds.

There are lots of other semi precious and interesting things to find too!

Like Jasper was EVERYWHERE and Makayla walked away with a whole bag of Jasper that we are going to tumble and polish for her. We also found some quartz and I wanted to find some Amethysts, but it was not to be :-(

We also didn't find any diamonds.

But we had tons of fun digging and trying!

Someone found a .7 carat diamond the day we were there!

But Oscar was more interested in the hole, and trying to stay warm!

Diamond or no, we had a blast together and definitely recommend stopping by if you are ever in Arkansas! Who knows, maybe you'll end up on their wall of big diamonds!