Arkansas and Oklahoma Road Trip: Part Three
I am back to talk about our road trip through Arkansas and Oklahoma in May and June 2021! After visiting Hot Springs, Arkansas, we drove to the Crater of Diamonds State Park in Arkansas, which is the site of a crater left from a volcano. This park is one of the only places in the entire world where the public is allowed to come and mine for diamonds! It is a huge field of dirt and mud that you can walk through and search for diamonds, gems, and other minerals.
When I had read about it online and how you can rent tools at the park, I decided we would buy our own tools and take them with us. My husband David and I went to Ace Hardware Store and purchased a one gallon bucket and some garden tools — a weeder, trowel, and a cultivator. When we got to the park, we noticed others were there with a wagon filled with five gallon buckets and shovels. These people were serious! And here we were with our dinky one gallon bucket and small garden tools! I did see one family who brought colanders to help them sift, which was pretty genius! Also, a lot of people were wearing rainboots and ponchos, which was smart because the forecast predicted rain. When we were inside the visitor’s center, it started pouring outside! We weren’t wearing boots or ponchos, but instead, I had water shoes on, David had tennis shoes on, and we were both wearing rain jackets. Thankfully, after about ten minutes, it let up, and it was clear the rest of the time we were there! We really did strike it lucky with the weather during our trip!
We got out there and filled our bucket with dirt that we thought might have some gems. We did see a lot of sparkles in the dirt, but we’re not sure what the sparkles were from. We then went to a pavilion which had troughs of water and tables. We realized we had no way to sift our dirt, so David went back to the visitor’s center to rent two sifters. We then put the dirt in the sifter, immersed it in water to sift out the dirt, then flipped it over onto the wooden table to see if we had found anything of value. We were out there for about three hours and sifted through three gallons of dirt. We ended up finding some calcite and jasper! It was a lot of fun, but quite dirty! Thankfully, they had a station where you could hose yourself and your equipment off so you wouldn’t have to go home muddy!
Afterwards, we went into town to eat at a local restaurant called the Miner’s Diner. They had really good food! David ordered a baked potato, and I got a hamburger. We then weren’t ready to get back on the road, and I remembered an attraction nearby from when I had researched what was in the city: Ka-Do-Ha Indian Village. We looked up the weather radar, because we knew a storm was coming. We felt we had about one to two hours before the storm hit the city, and if we timed it right, we wouldn’t have to drive through the storm. We asked our waitress about the Indian Village, and she said it was really good, and we shouldn’t miss it.
Well, it was okay. It had a one room museum and some archaeological dig sites of mounds that were created by Native Americans who had lived in the area. A few of the sites were closed off because trees had fallen on top of the sheds, so it wasn’t safe for us to see. We saw two sites where sheds had been built atop the sites. The real human bones had been properly taken care of, and casts of the bones were placed inside the hole to represent how the real bones had been found. Then, they had a large patch of dirt where you could dig for stones, gems, and artifacts. We mindlessly kicked at the ground while walking around, and David found part of an arrowhead and a piece of quartz! I was impressed! Overall, it wasn’t the best or coolest attraction, and maybe I was just tired of being outside all day in the heat and humidity. Or maybe I just don’t think it should be classified as a museum when it only had 1 room of artifacts. If you’re in the area and have time, then you can visit it, but if you’re pressed for time, then it can certainly be skipped.
We then started driving through the mountains on an endlessly curvy highway and finally made it into Oklahoma! I was so thankful to get to flat ground! The mountainous highway hardly had any roads connecting to it, and there were barely any cities or towns or villages between Murfreesboro, Arkansas and Tahlequah, Oklahoma. Taking over four hours, the drive was tiring because it started to rain in the middle, and there was hardly anywhere that would be safe for us to pull over and switch drivers. We finally found a parking lot for us to stop and switch. The people who live off that highway really have to drive far to get to civilization and to stores to buy food! I don’t know how they do it! I would not want to live in that area of the country. I was just incredibly thankful to get to our destination safely and without getting motion sick!
- I was not compensated for the reviews of any of these businesses.
