Over the River and Through the Woods into Arkansas I go!

I left Nancy and Bill's and had to go back bc I forgot my lunch. So I left again and headed to Muskogee (mus-ko-gee (not jee, gee) for the Five Civilized Tribes Museum. This museum is in a historical building that orginially belonged to the Creek before it was appropriated by the government half a dozen times and finally returned. It housed a few small exhibits downstairs and an art display upstairs. The most interesting thing I learned is that they used Choctaws to communicate in WWI - so they were the first code-talkers. Except these guys didn't even use a code, they just talked normally to each other. As soon as they took over the radios, the Americans got attacked less. Number 1 - you have to realize that at this time, American Indians were being taken from their homes as children and put into boarding schools to europeanize them and they were not allowed to speak their native language. Number two - Hello Germany! If we did this too you in WWI with indian languages you should get it for WWII! (when they used the navajo language and made a code).

Then I set off for Tallequah (Tal-e-kwa) for the Cherokee Heritage Museum. They had an excellent exhibit on the Trail of Tears. It really is sad what the colonists did to the American Indians. They had a village outside of what a OK village (after the TofT) would have looked like and a village that was pre-European contact. That part was a tour and a girl told us all about it and demonstrated some of the tools, weapons, and art techniques.

I took a backroad to the interstate and crossed into Arkansas. I stopped at the visitor center to take my photo, pick up a map, and get some propoganda bc really I know nothing about Arkansas other than the Little Rock Nine for civil rights and that Bill Clinton is from Arkansas.

Two and half hours later after driving through the Ouchita (Wash-it-ta - yeah i don't get it either) National Forest through the mountains, I arrived at Cherie's home in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Cherie is a lovely lady slightly older than me who teaches spanish, english, and french. We enjoyed a nice dinner and talked and talked and talked.

We decided to get up earlyish and got to Diamond Mine State Park. Cherie had never been and was eager to join in my adventures. This state park is interesting bc you go search for diamonds and you get to keep what you find and they will tell you whether what you have found is a real diamond. It is a field full of plowed dirt. Cherie and I were not really prepared and did not feel like renting buckets and shovels so we dug around with our hands and looked on the surface - both adequate ways to find diamonds. But we didn;t find any. We just picked up rocks that we thought were pretty - mostly jasper.

Cherie had an appointment at lunch so we came back, regrouped, and set off on our next minerological adventure - crystal hunting. Mt. Ida, right next door to Hot Springs, is the quartz crystal capital of the world. I had passed a lot of shops on my way to Cherie's and was dazzled by the sparkles and shine from the front of the shops and the lady at the visitor center had told me I could mine my own crystals there... cool! Cherie had never done it so she called a friend that lived in the area to find out which was the best place to go.

The best place to go was Judy's. We started at the shop looking around, got the key to the gate, and drove up the forest road and up to the top of the mountain. We couldn't really figure out where to park so we just kept going. i am pretty sure we went too far and were probably trespassing, but we did find tons of crystals! There were lots of clear quartz crystals, and I found a lot of chunks. It was fun to poke around and look for them - and way easier than looking for diamonds bc all you had to do was walk around and look for the sparkle from the sun reflecting off of them. Cherie and I both picked up more than a bowl full (the basin of choice considering we were in my car). I also picked up some big peices that had crystals growing on parts of them just bc I know I can leave them in my car until I get home and they will look nice in Mom's garden (or Forrest's).

Cherie had dance practice in the afternoon so I went to walk around town and see the hot springs. Hot Springs the town is partially national park which is baffling to me. There are no hot springs you can bathe in for free apparently. So the hot springs were protected even though a lot of them were capped with fancy shmancy bath houses to capitalize on the hot healing waters. And now these buildings are maintained by the NPS. I don't really get it and I didn't have much of an oppurtunity to explore bc a massive thunderstorm rolled into town. I was walking around and then made a mad dash to my car to escape the first of the downpour and the hail. I didn't make it to my car the second time and got soaked. Luckily the second time there was no hail.

So tomorrow I am going to walk around town a bit more and then get on the road to Baton Rouge and see Sunshine.