Key West Roadtrip 2023 - Day Two - Digging Deeper

Our stop of the day.

On our second day we checked out of our hotel and went to Crater of Diamonds State Park.  The draw of this park are the diamonds that are 'easily' found near the surface.

We arrived, rented our screens and shovels, and headed out to the plowed field to look for our fortune in diamonds.  I figured we would be there for two to three hours.  After about an hour I was done.  We kept at it for another half hour maybe before we decided to quit.  We didn't find any diamonds.  The Wife found some quartz and some calcite that both look very diamond-like but aren't valuable.  I found out I wasn't patient enough to be a prospector.

The diamond field is periodically plowed to help stir up the diamonds.

We, of course, are just amateurs.  While we were there we saw people loading up dozens of buckets full of dirt to be sifted and looked through.  Diamonds one carat or more are commonly found here but not by us.

It was a chilly day but the filtered sun was warm while we unsuccessfully hunted for riches.

The rest of the day we drove to Mobile, Alabama (passing through Louisiana and Mississippi along the way).  We stopped for a great lunch in a little diner in Farmerville, Louisiana.  The Wife did most of the driving today.  The eight hours of driving felt like more than the ten hours of the day before.  I'm starting to wonder if I'm getting too old for road trips.

Tomorrow we take a tour of Africatown and learn about the Clotilda, the last slave ship before driving on to Tampa, Florida to visit family.

Photos can be found in my 2023-01 Key West Roadtrip Google Photos album.