A Girl's Best Friend...

With apologies to Marilyn Monroe, Tiffany’s, LaDell, Elaine and Judy, diamonds may not be a girl’s best friend. I do like the song though. A trip to Crater of Diamonds at Murfreesboro outside of Hot Springs teaches visitors that it really is the guy who buys the bling that should be held in esteem and not the stone itself. Why? Because finding a diamond is darn hard work. There is a reason why they are expensive which has little or nothing to do with how much you love someone!
At the Crater, you can dig for diamonds and keep all that you find. Sounds good in theory, but hold on- it’s not quite that easy.
We paid our admission to the park, rented a few mandatory specialty tools, and trooped out onto the field of dreams. There we dug bucket after bucket of heavy dirt, lugged them to the washing sluice, classified the dirt and panned and washed the material, then flipped and sorted and picked through the material again hoping to find the Hope- or something close to it. Plenty of mud! No diamonds! The families out on the digging plain who had the closet thing to realistic expectations were the ones who carried out portable chairs, sun umbrellas, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, gator aid, small, light plastic buckets with small, light plastic shovels and a couple of play dump trucks for the kids to play in the dirt with. Because while you do have a long shot of washing up a diamond, the fact is that what the experience is all about, aside from a hands on learning experience, IS playing in the mud! Admittedly: That’s fun!