October 23, 2011
We are at Lake Greeson, a Corps of Engineers Campground. These are areas where the Army Corps of Engineers have dams and flood control projects and they always have campgrounds that are available on a first come first serve basis at a really reasonable cost. Some of them are bare bones and some are a good deal nicer. This is one of the nicer ones. They honor the Golden Age pass which gets us half price (one of the perks of being old) so we are staying for one fourth the price that it cost us at the KOA campground… true the KOA had more amenities but they were mostly for kids and this place is frequented more by boaters and fishermen.
Speaking of the KOA, look at this jumping place at the Bristol campground. It is just huge and there is soft sand all around so the kids won’t get hurt. What fun!
Neil found a more exciting play place.
These are the docks here at the Lake Greeson marina, part of the campground where we are now. Notice the poles sticking up in the air on either end of the docks…. the docks raise or lower on those poles with the water level. Clever!
We are trying to train Twink to a leash… as you can see, he isn’t very happy with lesson one. Progress report on that later.
I have seen cotton fields after harvest b but this is the first one I have seen when the cotton was ready to pick. Is it possible that some of this will be in one of my quilts some day?
The diamond mine in Murfeesboro
Here is Neil’s best find. No, not a diamond, just a pretty rock
I wondered why these few acres of Arkansas were gifted with diamonds and no other such place existed nearby. Well, as I understand it, here is what happened:
A gagzillion years ago this area was a volcano that erupted and the gas-rich volcanic ash and bits of lava shot into the air like champagne out of a bottle. Then, when the gas cloud cooled and collapsed, it filed the 600 foot deep crater with ash which later became diamonds.. There is some returning ocean and layers of sand stuff involved too, but in a nutshell, one quick boom and a few million years= tourist trade for an area of Arkanses that has no other reason to draw attention. To give you an idea of its relative lack of feature, there is no Walmart for 30 miles. Even Sam Walton passed it by.
The following picture is their demonstration of the rocks you can find there. Each is so small that the location of the rock in this dish is marked by a push pin. You have to have good eyes to be a diamond miner
.
No diamonds yet but tomorrow we go back with a long shovel and great expectations. Heh
