# Crater of Diamonds

Last modified by Richard Johnson on 2024/05/08 20:33
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So, we're heading toward Crater of Diamonds State Park in Arkansas, but it will take two days of travel to get there. We decided to spend one night at Tanbark Campground outside of Dickson, TN, a drive of ~350 miles:

Shouldn't be too bad. But, just wait...

There were a number of large backups on I-40 which cost us about 1 hour, there was a stop at Costco (for more lemon coated almonds!), there were two stops for gas, and then...

Ok, first we exited North Carolina and entered Tennessee:

After quite a few while, RIchard saw this woman pass us and give him a strange look...

Then, Richard saw another person pass us and signal that we should pull over!

Having seen this type of thing before, we suspected what was to occur next and wanted to pull completely off of the freeway into a parking lot (as we did the last time), but alas, there were no turn offs for many miles. So, we pulled over onto the shoulder in the middle of a wide, straight, stretch of freeway and turned on the flashers.

Looking at the trailer tires, we found that the front tire on the passenger side was completely destroyed!

So, we set about replacing it with the spare tire. It's actually really easy to do this on a trailer which has two axles. You can simply ride the good tire onto a large set of blocks, which raises the bad tire off of the ground sufficiently that it's fairly easy to replace! (Just make sure you lossen the lug nuts first, since after it's raised off of the ground it'll spin too freely to do so.) We always keep a large lug wrench and a torque wrench in the truck just for such an occurance, and we have a cigarette lighter powered tire inflater which we use regularly to check and top up pressure. After replacing the tire torquing it to the appropriate amount (using a star pattern of tightening, of course) and topping up the pressure, we were back on the road an hour later! We stopped after a while to make sure the torque was still good, and made it to the campground much later than originally intending! (We called the campground to say we would be arriving late, of course. They met us at the office within seconds of our arrival!)

We were a little concerned about the upcoming rain:

but it obligingly held off until after we got into the site, leveled, chaulked, and hooked up with electricity and water!

The showers at this campground are quite adequate and we are finally resting comfortably after a long and sometimes trying day.

Tomorrow, we travel just a little longer than today and finally reach Crater of Diamonds State Park in Arkansas.

Monday, April 6:

We found that Discount Tires carries the same tire as what we have on the trailer (and then Richard remembered that the other trailer tires were, indeed, bought from Discount Tire). We called a Discount Tire store in Memphis, where we would be passing by on our way to the State Park. They said they had some in stock, so we decided to try to get out as early as possible and drop by that store to get our destroyed tire fixed.

In the course of the trip, we crossed the Mississippi River and entered Arkansas.

The Mississippi River:

Arriving at the Discount Tire store, Richard was greeted by a guy whom we would later find is nicknamed "Little Chris" (because he says there's another 'Chris" who is "Big Chris"). He was very helpful, looking up our information in their network using Richard's phone number. (All Discount Tire stores are connected and your account information can be retrieved from any of them. Also, all warrantees are valid at all stores nation-wide. We didn't know that, but we do now.) Chris said, "I can take care of fixing your busted tire in less than 1/2 hour, no problem." Then we told him that we would actually like not just that, but the other rather bald tire replaced as well. He said, "Sure, I can do both in 1/2 hour, no problem!" Long story, short, he was indeed correct! He fixed both tires and replaced them onto the trailer (carefully jacking it up under the axles) all within about 1/2 hour and we were back on the road! It was amazing and Richard wrote them a glowing review, mentioning "Little Chris" by name, so he could get some credit for his amazing work! We hope it helps his work there!

After 4 more hours (It was 2-1/2 hours to the tire store and 4 hours after that), we finally reached the Crater of Diamonds State Park.

We thought that backing into the camping spot may be a problem, due to the rear view camera currently not working - probably a wire in the cable broken), but actually it went amazingly well and we are safely settled into our new home for the next few days.

May 7th:

The next morning, we finally got ourselves out of bed, had coffee, fed the kitties, had more coffee with breakfast, and finally made our way out to the mines!

When we first woke up, we heard an eery sound from outside. When we opened the door, the sound was louder. We finally came to realize that there were a huge number of cicadas

all around the park, in the trees!

Movie of Cicadas Sound

You have to pay $15/person to play in the dirt. The regularly "till" the ground every month or so, but apparently the last time this had been done was about 2 months ago. If you read the accounts of people who have just found diamonds by "ground collecting" (walking around looking at the ground), it seems to almost always be the case that they found them when the ground had been tilled the day before and then there was a good rain, which exposed them. We didn't have very nigh expectations, but thought it woiuld be good experience in using the sifting pans, etc.

We spend most of the day ground collecting and Kelly found quite a few pretty rocks.

That's about all!

When the mining area closed, at 4pm, we came back to the truck and Richard worked on fixing the cable connecting our trailer rear camera. The cable has always been far too long and we've always wrapped it around the hitch multiple times to compensate, but apparently when we hitched up the last time, it wasn't wrapped around enough and ended up dragging on the pavement! This ended up breaking almost all of the 5 wires inside the cable and the camera stopped working suddenly! It took quite a lot of testing wires to finally find the cause of them problem, but once it was found, it was kinda obvious!

Richard cut out the bad part of the cable and soldered each of the 5 wires back together, wrapping them with electrical tape. The resulting fix seems to work just fine, so we have a rear camera back again!

Afterward, we went for a short hike down to the Little Missouri River, which was a loop trail of just over 1 mile.

Including a foot long worm!

Apparently "Christmas Ferns" grow natively here:

May 8:

We wanted to stay another day, but our site was already booked, so we spent the morning hitching up and moving around the corner to a new site. We just left the kittles in the trailer with Kelly while Richard circled around the campground and ended up at the new site. Backed right in, hooked back up to water and electricity, and finally had some breakfast!

And... It's time to go back to the mines!

Kelly spent all day sifting through dirt, ending with using a saruca in order to find extremely small gem stones.

In the end, we found some extremely small pieces of what looked to be quartz or possibly diamond. Asking the expert on the way out, we were told it was quartz and calcite. So... No diamonds for us, but lots of experience in "rock classifying"!

Tomorrow, we head to Rocking A RV Park in Vernon, TX.

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Created by Richard Johnson on 2024/05/05 21:16

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