I find it’s always the case that I never get around to exploring the place where I live until I’m ready to leave it. I had been living in Little Rock, Arkansas for almost nine months and had yet to take advantage of the many attractions that gave the “Natural State” its title. As my time down south was drawing to an end, premonitions of regret and time wasted compelled me to get my act together, pack up the Nissan, and head deep into the mid-south. I rounded up some friends and set off towards Murfreesboro, about an hour and half west of Little Rock.
With 50 state parks and many other attractions to choose from we decided on Crater of Diamonds State Park as our first destination. Here’s the premise: the park is located on a volcanic pipeline, which billions of years ago was the right combination of carbon, heat and pressure to produce naturally occurring diamonds. You pay a $4.00 admission fee, dig for diamonds, and keep what you find!
Although an average of 600 diamonds are found a year since the crop’s discovery by John Huddelston in 1906, there are not enough to warrant a full-scale commercial mining operation. However, they do turn up with enough regularity to entice greedy tourists, like myself. I was enthralled at the prospect of DIY diamond mining and assumed I’d be plucking diamonds the size of softballs out of the volcanic earth.
Let’s just say your father was right, money doesn’t grow on trees and neither do diamonds. They’re under lots and lots of mud.
Arriving at the park after a scenic drive, we had a look around the museum. The displays offered a few pointers on diamond spotting before you, literally, head out into the trenches. After surveying the 36.5-acre plowed field of dirt, I realized . our excavation team, armed with a soupspoon and a makeshift pie-pan sieve, were entirely under-equipped. We decided to rent a couple of screens and shovels from the gift-shop before scouting for greenish dirt, a diamond site indicator.
After two hours of down pours and rooting through the mud, we hadn’t found any raw diamonds. Instead we produced some pebbles of Arkansas Quartz and the occasional bottle cap. The museum’s on hand appraiser confirmed our find. With that we took a last look at the clusters of wide-eyed, muddy children, digging away, enjoying merely the prospect of buried treasure.
Hot Springs, Arkansas
As it turns out we were there for the same reason, as our operation pie pan and all, was too small scale to yield any real profits. We packed up and decided drivea half hour back to the spa town of Hot Springs for a much-needed bath. The sweet taste and therapeutic quality of HotSpring’s 143°F water has been attracting bathers foras long as man has walked upright. The springs enjoyed a heyday in the late 1800’s when it was declared America’s 18th National Park. At that time the town boasted a city row of elaborate bathhouses catering to all manner of health seekers. The spring’s history as a communal resource stretches much further back, from Native Americans tribes who used the area as neutral trading ground, to European trappers and explorers. In its present manifestation, the town of Hot Springs still reflects its eclectic past, but with a little contemporary chintz thrown in.
We arrived too late to sneak in a bath at the Buckstaff, Bathhouse Row’s only remaining functional bathhouse. Instead, we scheduled an appointment at one of the town’s grand Hotels and had a look around Hot Springs. We strolled the faithfully restored row, stopping into the Fordyce Bath House and Museum for a peek into the exquisite luxury of a 19th century spa. There you could see everything from an elaborate stained glass skylight coronating a thermal fountain, to the ancestor of the modern rowing machine in the spa gymnasium. The archaic electrolysis massage machine, however, was a mildly frightening reminder of how far technology has come.
After the Fordyce we passed the open springs in the middle of town and drank our fill at the public cold springs. Then we made our way to the city’s centerpiece, The Arlington Hotel, for our bath. The Arlington was built in the 1920’s with a grand foyer decked out in a colorful jungle mural of exotic flowers, birds and beasts. Our appointment at the baths took us upstairs, to the original facilities where I paid my $45 for the complete package. I was given a receipt and a loofa with my name on it and shown to the ladies locker room. I was introduced to a large southern woman who told me to, ” strip off and holler when I was done” so I could be wrapped up in a sheet and taken to my bath.
The facility does show its age, reminding you that 80 years of bathers have sat in the old porcelain. Though the facility is very clean, the experience is not for those who don’t suffer public restrooms well. My new friend left me to get in my bath. I got about one foot in before hastily withdrawing to a perch on the edge of the tub where I remained (in a very unglamorous position) until she got back. When I told her the water was too hot she replied to buck-naked me, “I don’t expect you’d be hangin’ off the tub like that if it weren’t, sugar.”
She ran the cold water, turned on the whirlpool and handed me a cup to sipon as I eased in. “Now you just sit tight, pumpkin and I’ll be back to scrub ya.”
The question is does my vocabulary possess enough words to describe the sensation of every muscle in your body relaxing at the same time. No. I won’t try
and I don’t think I remember the experience rightly because after 20 minutes I was too light headed to recall my own name. I wobbled out and was asked if I wanted to sweat some more in the sauna.
That was more heat than I could handle, so I skipped straight to the hot towels strategically placed on my aches and pains. Thankfully, I was also given a cold one over my face and a glass of ice water to keep my brain from boiling. As soon as my heart stopped thumping it was time for the needle shower. I gladly jumped in thinking it was cold water and quickly realized it, too, was hotter than hell’s half acre. Finally, I got my massage, rounding out the hour-long appointment.
I met up with my very relaxed friends, we tipped our bathers and headed on home, no richer for all our digging, but feeling good and with no regrets.
Real Travel Adventures 