Crystal Mining

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Taking Paul's uncle's advice, we stopped at the tourist info center when we got to Arkansas. We picked up a couple of brochures for crystal mining and continued on our way to Memphis. We hadn't planned any stops along the way, but found a place near enough to the highway that we decided to spend a day mining.

Here's how it worked: it's a real, active crystal mine that dumps its leavings in a separate area. It's basically mud and dirt that doesn't have any giant crystals in it. They open this area up to the public. Of course you sign a waiver saying that any injuries or death aren't their fault, pay $15 for the right to take home whatever you find in a day's dig, and march out there with rice sacks and J bars in hand. In the morning we dug for a few minutes, put some cool looking rocks in our sacks, and went to wash them. There, we started wondering exactly what it was we were looking for, especially because everything that was left behind at the washing station looked like what we came down there to wash. We asked a girl that came up to wash her find what a good crystal looked like, and she pulled a beautiful clear rock out of her sack that was covered in "points"...as if it had been hand cut into prisms. "OHHHHHH.....okay, we'll look for that"...haha!

So off we went, and found a small handfull of clear rocks with points on them, but nothing too impressive. We headed back to our camper for a break from the opressive heat and sun (oops, forgot to put sunscreen on the back of my ears...ouch!). During our second attempt, several dump trucks trundled out of the mine and dumped brand new piles of sludge into our mining area. Every time this happened, everyone left what they were doing and pounced on the piles till it was decided that it held a lot or nothing at all worth gathering. One such pile was like thick chocolate pudding, it was so muddy...but we guess that's why there was so much good stuff to be found in it. One man found some amazing chunks of crystal, the size of Rummy. And then Paul found a rock the size of a spare tire. We couldn't tell if it was anything good, because it was so thickly covered in mud (and so were we), that it couldn't be scraped off enough to tell if it was black rock, cloudy, or clear. But, we could tell that it had some points on it (that Paul and the other guy actually cut themselves on).

We kept digging for a while, then decided to try and haul it down to wash up. We had to borrow a dolley and some help, but we got it down there, only to discover that yes, it was clear and covered in points. It weighed too much for us to handle, but we got it into the back of the truck and found out that it's worth about $700. Pretty cool! We officially have our first tacky lawn ornament for the next place we live. Haha!

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