Family Quarts Digging Trip (Arkansas II)

This is the second part to our Arkansas trip that I posted about last time!  In the post prior to this one, I talked about our trip from Oklahoma City to Arkansas, camping along the way at Mt. Nebo State Park, and some beautiful Oklahoma skies.  

The main point of the trip was to meet some of Tyler's family members for a fun weekend of hunting quartz by day and relaxation by night.

We arrived Friday evening to a quaint VRBO home in Hot Springs Village, Arkansas.  Everyone got settled in and chatted until bedtime.  Most of us went to bed early, because we planned to get up and be at the Ron Coleman Mine by opening.

As you may remember from our camping trip the day before, Arkansas and Oklahoma were experiencing some pretty wet conditions that weekend - and Saturday morning was no exception.

The basic idea of these "mines" are that the dirt that comes out of an actual underground mine is dumped here and quartz diggers come sort through the piles looking for the perfect crystals.  

This was the basic scene:

Tyler's grandpa is a pro-rock-and-crystal-digger, so just a couple hours in his crystal bag was nearly full!

All things are a serious matter for Tyler when he's digging.

This ain't fun and games, y'all.  It's serious business.

Tyler's grandma was finding some pretty great crystals herself!  She's another pro!  (But who isn't a pro when it comes to Tyler's family?)

Tyler examining a clump to see if there are any crystal formations inside.  He always looks for the big one.

No matter what age you are, digging can take its toll on your back.  You're constantly bent over digging with your shovel and sorting through the clumps of dirt.  And as you may have noticed, this is no clean and tidy affair - especially on a rainy day.

Sometimes the staff would use the backhoe and turn over the piles to make it easier to find things.  

The nice part about rainy days are the ease of finding puddles to wash crystals off with.  Sometimes you just aren't sure what you've found until you clean it up.

This is my second pair of soaked shoes for the weekend.  Thank goodness for flip flops, since I wouldn't have had anything else dry!

Despite being somewhat miserable to be wet, you can still appreciate how pretty the rain and fog are over the Arkansas hills.

My father-in-law and Tyler's Aunt did quite a bit of walking on the dirt mounds.  The rain uncovered many of the crystals toward the top of the pile, so they were already washed off and visible without having to dig for them.  

(Pardon the water smudges.  I knew I wanted to take pictures, but didn't want to have a water damaged phone, so I kept it in a ziplock baggy.)

My mother-in-law also looked for some pretty quartz rocks on top of the mounds.  She was hoping to find some nice yard rocks since they were planning to enlarge their flower/rock beds to help conserve water in lieu of watering grass.

These were her dream pieces, but they were too large to carry and put in the car to take home.  We took pictures just to admire them anyway.

We got back to the gift shop, and ate some lunch on the front porch before heading home!

We saw this super beautiful moth while we were waiting to go home!

We had to put towels over the seats, take our shoes off, and I even had to tie plastic sacks around my feet because we were so muddy by the time we left!

These are our muddy selfies.

With my sister-in-law, (and Tyler's bunny ears).

 This small little plate of quartz was my favorite find!  It cleaned up quite nice!

 This is one of my other favorites that I found, just a small little cluster.

My pile of cyrstals:  

Tyler's pile of crystals:

I'm glad I waited to post this, because Tyler just informed me yesterday that the crystals I found were "better big pieces" than his.  I love it when he says romantic things like that (even if it takes him one month to admit it!)

The little vacation home the family stayed in was cute as well.  It was right off the bay of the lake, and the best part about was a screened in porch area off the side of the dining area.

I somewhat adored the backs of these chairs - simple but unique.

The home also had a neat two-toned vaulted wooden ceiling, and a stone asymmetrical fireplace.  

Some older homes just have nice character...those were the nicer characteristics!

Another great aspect of this rental was that they also had two kayaks that we could enjoy during our stay!  One evening I went out with Tyler to explore the lake, and the next evening I went with Kelsey, as pictured below.

The weekend went by quickly, but we had a great time camping, digging for crystals, and spending time with family! What adventures have you gone on this spring and summer?

Family Roadtrip to Arkansas

Last month, we went on a little family weekend trip to meet up with some of Tyler's family who live in other parts of the United States.  The meeting place was in Arkansas where our family rented a vacation home rental by owner for everyone to stay at.  Tyler, his sister, and I drove from the Oklahoma City metro area on the Thursday night before the rest of the family was due to meet at the rental home on Friday afternoon, and had intentions of camping half way through our trip to Arkansas somewhere in Eastern Oklahoma.

We stopped at B'dubs for some wings to eat on the road, and headed off into the eastern sunset.  Yes, it was an all encapsulating sunset - and it was indeed still a beautiful sunset in the eastern skies.  (This is why I love Oklahoma).

As you might have guessed based on the clouds in those beautiful sunset photos, it begain to rain just before we reached the area we initially planned to camp.  Oklahoma was having a big increase of scattered thunderstorms that week, so we thought we'd be able to miss it by choosing another camp location.

Since it was already late, we decided to just keep driving into Arkansas until we got tired of it.  

Tyler found a campsite on the phone GPS called Mt. Nebo State Park.

It sounded like an okay place to camp for the night, so off I-40 we went toward Darndanelle, Arkansas and Mt. Nebo.

It had become extremely foggy, and the campsite was up in the mountains.  The further up we went, the worse the fog.  The turnbacks on the roads were really sharp, so it was a little bit intense.

When we finally made it to the campsite, this is what the scene looked like.  Strangely it wasn't too dark to walk around since the fog intensified the street lights.  It was a little bit eerie, and really, really quiet!

We got the tent set up and had the most peaceful sleep listening to rain fall on the tent sometime in the middle of the night.

The next morning, the fog was still around and this is the scene I woke up to:  beautiful pine trees soaring through the fog.  It was so foggy you couldn't really make out colors, nor see anything in the distance.

Tyler made us coffee, and we walked around the campsite.  I happened to notice some peculiar activity and come to find out there was a wedding planned there that afternoon or evening.  

After coffee and packing up our tent, the three of us decided to take a hike on some of the trails branching from the camp site.  This house was just off the trail, but I thought it looked so interesting in the fog.

(Okay, you may notice that we don't get a lot of fog in Oklahoma...and when we do it is just in the early morning until the sun burns it away...so the concept that this fog stuck around for hours just fascinated me!)

The trail was really beautiful, but also a little dangerous because the rocks on the trail were really slippery with moss and water!

A sweet doe stopped and watched us as we passed. 

My man on the trail!

How can one resist taking a turtle picture when there is a turtle available?

On our way back from the trail, the rain really started to pour and our clothes, shoes -- everything, was completely soaked for the rest of the ride to Hot Springs Village!

Keep your eyes peeled for the next post about our trip at the Ron Coleman Quartz Mines!