Short Vacation

We took a short vacation last week and had a great time with our friends, Ann and Charles. It was a quick trip to Tunica, Mississippi where the "boys" love to gamble. We had to stay at Bally's this time (NOTE: it is best to make reservations), but Friday morning we went back to the Horseshoe where Ann and I sipped Starbucks and Bob and Charles played more slots.

Next, it was the "girls" turn to have fun. We drove back to Hot Springs, Arkansas looking for a crystal mine. We took our laptops along so while on the drive we researched the how, where, when and why of crystal hunting. We chose the Arrowhead mine, but by the time we got to Mt. Ida they were closing.

We spent the night at a nice little "old-fashioned" motel called the Crystal Inn. This entire area is dedicated to crystal hunters.

Since we were told there really wasn't a lot to do in Mt. Ida on a Friday evening other than the high school football game, we drove around and came across a lovely area overlooking Lake Ouachita.

We had hoped the leaves would have more fall colors but it was a little too early.

But the view of the lake was breath-taking, the photos just don't do it justice. It was a great evening.

We were up pretty early Saturday morning to go by the hardware store and pick up last minute tools (we had brought some). Then the drive out to Arrowhead took about 15 minutes. Not knowing what to expect we were surprised at what the "mine" looked like. We would call that a gravel pit in Texas.

But we had a great time digging and finding crystals. We did choose an "option" where we were directed to a pile to go through.

Ann and Charles took the buckets home to clean the crystals we found. I will post some photos of them later.