Our road trip took us from Florida, along the coastal states, until we turned north to head inland to Murfreesboro, Arkansas to visit the Crater of Diamonds State Park. There, you can keep any diamonds you find in the old crater of a kimberlitic pipe that spewed diamonds out many years ago. We had read about the park and were keen to see if we could find any diamonds scavanging around the park. Here we are at the entrance on a cold, drizzly day in mid-February.
I'd read about the different areas of the crater and the different colors of the dirt within the crater. You can see the green in the soil here from the peridotite that the magma brought to the surface.
The old mine shaft of the Ozark Diamond Mine still stands on the park property, but no mechanical means are now allowed in the search for diamonds here. I'd brought along my black light, hoping to look for diamonds that might fluoresce at night, but those are not allowed either, and the park closes the diamond hunting area at 4 P.M. so we couldn't even try it.
The park plows up the grounds once a month to bring new soil to the surface for folks to hunt on. I just walked stooped over and scrutinized the ground for hours. My back was killing me by the end of the day and we decided it wasn't worth it to come back and try another day. We could've rented the equipment to 'wet sift' but it just seemed like too much work for the gain in this cold weather. The wet sift is the same system we used to mine for sapphires in Australia.
You can shovel buckets of dirt and gravel and sift them in these huge troughs of water to try to wash out the diamonds. It's hard and heavy work and is a slow process. Folks can take up to five gallons of sifted gravel home to search through later, but we weren't prepared enough to do so.
This is lamprolite, a mineral that crumbles easily once it is exposed to the atmosphere, but it is a pretty, speckled specimen.
There are nearly four acres of grounds int he park for diamond fossicking. The diamonds don't hold the soil and they tend to sit on the top of the dirt after a good rain. I heard only one shout of success the afternoon we visited.
The Mauny House, built by the former owner of the lands around the park. Built in the 1830's, it is an amazing, old wooden structure to still be standing after all these years. It is the oldest building in Pike County, AR.
In town, this souvenir shop offered slag glass for sale.
Some pretty pieces, in many colors.
Red and turquoise looked so nice in the sunshine.
Too bad the slag was imported from a glass production operation somewhere else. The several stores that displayed it for sale all belonged to the same party.
One shop had this big clay bowl full of copper chips that had been flattened. The clerk told me "The local Indians used to use it for currency around these parts".
A sculpted ball of metal objects on the sidewalk outside a gallery in Murfreesboro.
This metal sculpture of a Native American readying a bow to shoot also caught my eye.
Along the road from the park, this lawn displayed many old oil company signs and paraphenalia
In an historic downtown village area, this old barn forms a great backdrop to the yard full of blooming daffodils.
The daffodils created a lane just inside the fence of the property.
The first flowers of spring popping up in Arkansas in February.
Three wagon carts sit under a roof along the road, waiting for their horses to draw them around.
We eventually made it to Austin, TX to see our friends Jim and Susan. We visited the capitol building. The reddish granite is a distinctive color.
Looking up at the roof in the rotunda, the letters T-E-X-A-S fill in the spaces between the points of the lone star.
A colorful mosaic tile mural on the floor of the museum in Austin represents the different peoples of Texas
Karen getting 'the treatment' from LBJ in his presidential library in Austin.
Even the waffles at the hotel were shaped like the state of Texas.
We kept heading westward to Kerrville, where we visited with more old cruising friends, Bobby and Leslie. Bobby is showing Jason how to run his tractor.
Bobby and Leslie with their Basenji, Lewis in their new home they had built two years ago. Leslie is big into dog training these days.
The layers of rock in the road cuts in TX are about the only place you can hunt for cool rocks and minerals. All the land in TX is privately owned and there are very few public lands where rock collecting is allowed.
This creamy yellow stone is sometimes quarried for use in accents and landscaping slabs.
We found these cactus leaves with hearts carved out of them in Alpine, TX.
Jason joins the red, white, and blue cowboys at the visitor center in Alpine.
The red rocks of the surrounding hills were a pleasant color.
The Museum of the Big Bend, on the campus of Sul Ross University. The Big Bend area is named after the big bend the Rio Grande River takes along the Texas-Mexico border just south of here. It's also a big national park along the border.
We just happened to visit Alpine on the last days of the 33rd Annual Cowboy Poetry Gathering. Yep, cowboys from 11 states and 5 Canandian provinces gathered here to sing, recite poetry and tell stories over a three day period. It was a bittersweet event this year as they claim it is the last time they'll do it. They can't find enough volunteers to handle the logistics of the gathering and the old cowboys are dying and/or getting too old to deal with the details themselves. The younger generations just aren't interested in this kind of stuff.
A singing cowboy who also plays the harmonica carries spare harmonicas on his belt instead of bullets. We went to several of the sessions offered for free over the two days we were there and were quite pleasantly surprised.
A local food truck along the main drag in Alpine.
Alpine has lots of murals on the sides of its buildings, like this old cowboy calendar scene.
The Sul Ross University is the main attraction in the town now.
The town and University boasts Dan Blocker, aka 'Hoss' Cartwright, as one of its alumni.
This cowboy mural depicts many of the local brands used by ranchers in the area.
Even the inside of the Alpine railroad station has a big wall mural.
Another train mural on the opposite wall in the station.
A desert scene surrounded by brands accents the wall of the local lumber company.
An eclectic collection of antiques and other local objects were in the yard of a local shop, The Cheshire Cat.
This cast bronze statue of a hobbled horse waiting for its rider to return is quite detailed. It is on the Sul Ross University grounds.
Karen in a cowgirl cutout.
Jason in the cowboy cutout.
Inside the museum is this huge rock slab with Native American painting on it. Nobody really knows the meaning behind the painting, but the museum had to rescue it from a nearby canyon once its location became known and vandals started damaging it.
A full length Indian headress with eagle feathers.
The university had an awesome buffet in its cafeteria and we partook of it two days in a row. We got to chatting with this old guy, Robert, who lived a couple of blocks away and was a fellow rockhound. He invited us to his home to look at his rocks and he gave me a 'talking stick' he'd polished from a cactus arm.
This is the choya cactus that he uses for his wood sculpting projects.
The hills in TX are pure desert delights for my eyes.
The scenic hills shine red in the late day sun along the railroad bed.
As we turned north to head towards Denver, we encountered snow outside of Albuquerque. So much for avoiding winter, but Colorado at least has the sunshine.
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