"My Arkansas Rock Trip"

Our first stop was Crater of Diamonds State Park near Murfreesboro, Arkansas. On the first day we gathered our 5 gallon buckets, gloves, sifters, hand rakes, shovels, and rain gear and headed out into a dirt field the size of 5 football fields. I spent most of my time sifting dirt and building dams in the East drainage ditch. It rained on and off most of the day creating small streams, which made it easy to sift the dirt. I found mainly small pieces of quartz and jasper the first day. The second day it rained just enough to keep the creek running. With my newfound friends we played in the stream building dams and sifting in the lakes they created. I found more jasper and blue calcite. My mom was lucky enough to find a small yellow diamond by sifting thru “many” pails of dirt.

Our next stop was at the Ron Coleman Quartz Mine. Here they take truckloads of material out of the mine and dump it in a large open area for people to dig thru. The rule is what you find you can keep as long as you can get it to your car. In the first 5 minutes I found a beautiful quartz chunk that had all kinds of perfect points on 2 huge crystals. The rest of the day I dug around the spot with my grandpa where I found my big quartz chunk. We found a pocket that had all kind of pieces of little and big perfectly clear quartz. After we brought all of our quartz up to the van we were able to take a tour of the owners personal rock museum. There were pieces of quartz and amethyst towers almost 5 feet tall and the entire museum was incredible. The Arkansas trip was one of the best trips of my life. This trip is one I highly recommend.

Nathan is pictured happily building dams and redirecting rivers at the Crater of Diamonds State Park in Arkansas. The “shovel sign” behind him marks where a perfect diamond was found many years ago.

Nathan and his Grandpa find perfect quartz crystals at the Ron Coleman Quartz Mine in Arkansas. It had finally stopped raining so we could take a picture.