This Weekend

Wow, I packed a lot in this weekend. Last Thursday I went to the midnight showing of GI Joe. Friday I mowed for a friend and that took up 2 1/2 hours of my day. I played cards both Friday night AND Saturday night. Sunday we got up and decided to head for Arkansas. My wife had been wanting to go camping since Spring Break. There was no planning and prepping involved. Our main destination was Crater of Diamonds State Park. We found out online that the campground was closed. We left our house about 9:45am, gassed up, then headed east. We stopped on the way for groceries and arrived around 2:30pm. It was HOT! We basically checked the place out and asked where would be a good place to camp.

We arrived at Narrow Dam campgrounds about 4:30pm. While setting up a park ranger informed us that we were setting up our tent in a restricted area. After talking with him for a while he recommended another campground nearby that might be more enjoyable. It was right on the water and had a beach swimming area. We made it there and got our tent set up by 6pm. We purchased 3 day fishing passes, hunted for worms, went swimming, fished and then had hot dogs and smores before dark. We packed it in.

We bedded down about 9:30. As of 12:45am I had yet to fall into a deep sleep. At one time I saw the moon as it glided across the sky right about our open screened tent. We packed up camp by 8:30am and headed to search for diamonds..

We spent about 4 hours total sifting through the Arkansas soil searching for the big one. It is really just a field that has been plowed. You rent a bucket, screens and shovel for about $20 and we paid $18 as a family to get into the park to dig. It was really hot so we found a large tree and started digging. As far as we know we didn't find any diamonds. This couple acre area was deemed not a profitable place to mine for diamonds, but a few big ones have been found there.

As we were finishing up our daughter reminded us that she had gymnastics practice. We hurried and left by 1:15pm and made it home by 5:30. Just enough time to shower and get to practice.

FUN times!