Diamond Mines are not a Girl’s BFF

Weatherwise our luck has held. We got up this morning to a beautiful sunshiny day. With that being the case we decided to take the 2 hr trek to Murfreesboro to Diamond Mine State park, where you can sift dirt and find real diamonds.

H. had told us it was a very dirty process so on the way out of town we stopped at Walmart (the only store virtually) and picked up a t-shirt and pants to trash. I’m sure we were a sight especially later changing at the rest stop.

It was a loooong drive, as most of it was not interstate or highway. In fact, we were on some very, very back roads. Nice though to see the country side. It feels a bit western-y - which makes sense - we are currently nearer OK and TX than anything else, but oddly it has a rural New York feel. More rolling hills, scrub pine. Very rural.

Eventually we ended up at the state park. There was a large entrance area that also housed the camping area pool. It looked very tempting. Beyond the building was a field. It looked like any other tilled New England field, dotted with people digging,

So… what the heck? We bought hats, rented a shovel, bucket and screen sifters and trekked out into the field….

Guess what??? Right, we found nothing. I did get an appreciation of what miners do, what it’s like and why the dwarfs really must have been hard workers (I know that was coal - even worse). I also thought - what a species we all are that here all these people have paid money to come play in the mud! It was interesting. The soil here is like play doh. I’ve never played in mud so thick and like modeling clay. And I have played in mud. We ‘sifted’ and pawed through 2-3 buckets, stood elbow deep in dirty water washing off rocks and finally said, okay, we’ve had enough of this.

We did get filthy though.

Once again though, I’m glad to say I’ve done that… glad to realize all those treasurer hunter shows on tv are full of manure and I’m not missing out on finding the hope diamond with ease. And speaking of Hope, we were 10 maybe 20 miles from Hope AR where Bill Clinton was born. RURAL. I’m glad to have seen rural AR, including driving through Delight (a 1/8 horse town) and seeing a goat on someone’s porch., We drove up and down the street 3 times trying to get the picture. I HATE the digital camera, finally I think we got a picture but by that point, the goat was in the yard. Besides the goat, mostly there was a whole lotta scrub pine.

It shall be another early evening and tomorrow morning we’ll head toward Little Rock and on to Memphis. I’ve been sorely disappointed with the culinary options since Birmingham so I have high hopes for Memphis.