Thursday, September 18, 2014

Crater of Diamonds State Park - a Day One

This morning I had to go to the Welcome Center to register since I got in late last night. I took my "Diamond finding tools" so I could start my adventure. My tools consisted of a kitchen colander, a kids shovel and sifter combo, a garden shovel, a pair of gloves, a towel in case I had to be on my knees, and a pail.



The path to the center is right beside my camper and it is beautiful. It is only 2/10th of a mile.



I asked to stay 2 more nights but my campsite was taken. I can stay one more night and I only have to move to the next campsite. I sure hope the wifi reaches there. I am spoiled here. My senior discount doesn't apply to weekends so the site is $30 plus tax. It costs about $8.50 to look for diamonds. So I payed it all and headed to the Diamond field.



It was not exactly what I expected. It's a big field that they plow up periodically to help uncover diamonds.

Needless to say that the kids shovel did not come out of my bag. The gloves were useless since you spend a lot of time rinsing rocks and mud in a long trough. And I never used the towel since I just leaned over and shoveled dirt into my bucket. No one mentioned my kitchen colander but it was the only one in use. This is what you are supposed to use. But mine worked fine.



Once I dug up the dirt, I shoveled some of it into my colander and shock it in the water to try to clean off the mud.








I had to squish the mud between my fingers since I didn't have the proper tools, until I just had little rocks/gems left. Then you sort through each rock and took out the ones that looked promising.



Notice that there is at least one sparkling thing in this batch. I did this over and over for about 2 hours and went inside to have my "finds" inspected. No diamonds but she did tell me what kind of rocks I found. I don't remember any except for volcanic rock. She gave me tips for finding diamonds so I went back later with Seymour and Zooey - yes dogs are allowed in the mining area - and I found another sparkly thing. Again, no Diamond. Only 2-4 diamonds are found most days and I think that they are tiny, but the hunt is fun and relaxing and the other people are nice.

It got extremely hot in the field this afternoon. It was 91 but no clouds. I am hoping that tomorrow morning is cooler. The hunt will continue!


Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

No comments:

Post a Comment