november 2

November '07 - Page 2

Thursday, November 08

Wow! 31 degrees this morning. It was a very quiet, but cold, night. In the a.m., the sun started warming things up, and we soon went another mile further on the dirt road to the sandbar campground. Here, we saw many good stones for our garden, and we picked up more than one Wal-Mart box full (remember: we came prepared with four empty boxes!). We also took some great pictures of the river; very scenic. The river is very low now, but they are expecting some rise through rain sometime this month, and then the place becomes very busy.

Back on the dirt road (Weyerhaeuser logging road) towards Hwy 278, then south to 70, west to 71 and south to Murfreesboro, this is the home of the nation’s only diamond mine open to the public: Crater of Diamonds State Park. We arrived quite early (about 10 a.m.) and dug…dug… until about 4 p.m. Got some nice rocks, but no diamonds.

Good Morning America had a film crew here yesterday because someone found a large 5 1/2 carat diamond on Monday.

We were thinking about staying another day for more digging, but maybe not…

Friday, November 09

Well, it’s cloudy this morning and foggy-wet; maybe not a good day for digging. We walked up to the Visitor Center to take in the demonstrations of wet and dry methods for finding diamonds. It was still kind of wet about 10 a.m., so we decided to take in the Craft and Folk Festival at Beavers Bend State Park in Oklahoma instead. On the way, we stopped for this and that, and got to the state park about 2:30 p.m., still time to check out some of the crafts and some of the singing. That machine on the right is a portable corn mill. Lots of fun, and we plan to stay for some more tomorrow. There were no more RV spaces because of this event, but we found the tent area and we’ll dry dock for the night. It’s been warmer today, so we shouldn’t have any problems keeping warm.

Beautiful sculpture of horses in walnut!

A couple selling musical instruments.

Saturday, November 10

A cool day today, misting. We went through the indoor craft displays (great fun), then stayed for the folk singing for awhile.

Some high stepping...

Still uncomfortable in the mist. Wanted to go to Caddo Lake today and spend the night there to see the cypress trees in color, but because of the low temperatures, decided to go home. Left at noon. As we left the mountains of Oklahoma, and traveled through Eastern Texas, it got clearer and warmer. Home again for an evening of rest before a regular church day tomorrow. No regrets; had a great week of sightseeing.

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