diggin’ in

I am in one of those places where I feel that I will never blog again. Or, rather, I feel that I will just as soon as this next project is over – but there is always another project, isn’t there? Also, that I had this really important thing that I wanted to say, and I can’t write about anything else until I write about that. Or even that I should have done my version of this already, but I haven’t.

All of which look really lame and incredibly self-centered when typed out here in front of me.  And slightly overly dramatic.

Hey, you get what you pay for, right?

So, without further ado, here’s a post from a year ago. Well, it should have been written a year ago anyway; I was reminded of this little adventure when we got a birthday invitation this week and this post has to do with the same birthday occurring last year. Only not the birthday, exactly, but what the rest of us did while one went to the birthday.

Confused yet?

My middle son, Jonathan, has a dear friend that has invited him to every birthday since they were toddlers. We look forward to them every spring because this family does not go in for the usual – no sir. They camped in a giant teepee one year.  Last year? They dug for diamonds. It was glorious. Jonathan had a fantastic time.

I am sure you people with more than one child know where this is going.  When one child gets to go away for the whole day and might find DIAMONDS, well, you poor sucker parents better find an adventure for the rest of the family. At least, that is, if you are Bryan Jones.

That’s how we ended up digging for crystals outside of Hot Springs about this time last year.

Let me just say that I was a bit – um, skeptical about going and digging in the dirt for an afternoon.  Not to mention paying for the privilege.

Add to that the fact that we didn’t entirely have a plan.  I know you’re surprised. We just set out for Mt. Ida.  Bryan spent a summer there in college working at Camp Ozark; he remembered there being all kinds of ‘dig your own’ places around there. After a couple of false starts, we ended up at Wegner’s Crystal Mines, which turned out to be a perfectly delightful place.

I mean seriously – when the road to your dig looks like this, how can you not be charmed?

And then you’re all in that crazily red dirt with your big orange buckets and somehow even though you know it’s tailings from a mine dumped into a field…well, you don’t feel like that anymore.  You feel like you’re digging for buried treasure.

And then, after we dug and dug and dug some more and then found the hugest crystal of the day when Bryan came over to tell me something and just tripped on it – well, after that we went over to the sieve.  Which was also surrounded by lovely scenery, both natural…

and manmade. YOWZA.

The sieving area was wonderfully cool after digging in the sun – and even though I was reluctant to pay extra for the special bucket of dirt and stones that you have to buy to use the sieve – I ended up being really glad that we did. How fun is it to find tiny treasures? While playing in the water?

At the end of the day, we collected ourselves and looked at some rocks just like ours, only a little bigger…

…before we stopped at at the Dairyette in Mt. Ida (Holla Camp Ozark!) and refreshed ourselves for the trip home.