Hot Springs is actually a national park, but unlike the usual parks, it’s actually the historical row of bath houses that constitute the park. That wasn’t what we were in the mood for so we just drove by them on the way out of town so we could see them. Our rough destination for today was the Ron Coleman mine. It’s one of the most popular mines where people can pay a small fee to dig in a real mine. They also have a campground and RV park that we thought would be nice to stay in. However we decided to take our time and explore all the back roads on our way there.
At one point we took a seasonal trail that’s only open a few months in the fall. It ran along a river and was full of huge puddles of varying depth. (luckily none were too deep! That’s why we have a winch on the Jeep) At one point there was a path that diverted from the trail and went to the river itself for another epic camp site. The water was crystal clear and full of colorful fall leaves.
This trail was pretty wet the entire way but at one point it looked like it disappeared entirely! Upon further investigation it was still there, but it turned sharply to the left and crossed a small creek! Our first water crossing!! Huzzah!
Eventually this trail popped out on a main road and we started making some progress towards the campground. But… we took another detour to an old lookout tower. The road was blocked off so we left the Jeep parked and hiked up the hill to check it out. The tower was long gone, but the foundation, firepit, and benches were still there. We were only up there for a few minutes but had the lucky timing to catch a pair of military C-130 airplanes flying by. They were so low we were almost level with them! Very cool experience!
The airplanes were super cool! We headed back down to the Jeep and drove for a ways through Weyerhauser forest land. We had to detour a few times because our GPS kept trying to take us down roads with heavy steel gates. Eventually we made it out and after some more driving stopped to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches next to a creek.
Finally we made it to the town of Jessieville where the mine is located and stopped at the huge rock shop that the Ron Coleman mine runs. The building itself was packed with goodies (including the gigantic crystal in front! wow!) but they had an entire back area with tables of gorgeous rocks! I wanted one of everything!
So I’ve always wanted one of those huge amethyst crystals to have in my house, but they’re super expensive. The prices here weren’t bad and I picked up a smaller one for like $100. It was a deep purple and about a foot tall. While waiting in line to pay we started admiring a huge amethyst that was sitting on the floor inside. The lady at the counter told us it was on sale because it had broken in half after someone dropped it. Well… you can’t even tell where they epoxied it back together and with all of the discounts we managed to wrangle ended up only costing us $200 instead of the $3000 it was going to originally be sold for! So… we bought it! The logistics were going to be difficult because now we have a huge and very delicate rock that barely fits in our Jeep. Instead of heading to the mine and camping for another few days we made the decision to head home with our fancy rock and hopefully avoid camping in the severe weather that was headed our way! We were snug in our house by dinner time!
I couldn’t wait and cleaned up a few of the crystals so I could see what we got!
We came home sooner than we intended but it was a good decision because the storm that came through hit much harder down south than it did here in the northwest corner of Arkansas. We still had pouring rain and high winds. I’m glad we weren’t out there camping in it! I still want to plan another trip to dig for more crystals now that we know how it’s done!