Saturday, March 26

We went quartz mining at the Ron Coleman Mine. It was located deep in the Ozarks near a little town called Jessieville. We saw a couple deer on our way out to the mine.

Going into it, we really didn’t know what to expect, but it was a whole lot more fun than we imagined! You get a shovel or rake and a bag then they send you out to dig in a big pile of dirt.

It wasn’t hard to find cool-looking rocks. The kids had their sacks pretty heavy by the time we headed to the washing area to see what was under all the dirt.

Raine had been wanting to ride a zip line and it just so happened that they had one at the mine. Carter and I watched as Raine and Daddy were harnessed to the line and then sent flying out over the open pit.

I took a video of their ride, but since I was just using my cellphone, you can’t see them most of the way down. As it turns out though, Raine didn’t make it all the way to the platform at the end. She was a good 50 feet away when she came to a complete stop, dangling over the mine. She says that when she started slowly sliding backward she became concerned that she would never get off that zip-line. Fortunately, a line-operator named Jake hooked himself to the line and zipped out to where she was. Raine held onto his feet as he pulled them hand-over-hand back to the platform. (That’s how you do things in the Ozarks!)

That red arrow points to the lower platform.

Jake gave Raine some really cool quartz crystals when she finally made it off the line. She handled it like a champ, even though it made her fairly nervous to be dangling 100+ feet above the ground. She hasn’t ruled out going on a zip-line again in the future but it will be a while before the memory of this fades enough for her put on another harness!

After that, we headed back out to the mine to dig for more crystals. While we were at the washing area earlier, we talked to the serious diggers who showed us what to look for. Our second time out we found some good ones.

After spending all day playing in the dirt, we were tired. We ate dinner at La Hacienda, in Benton, and then headed to the pool.