Crater Of Diamonds State Park

The camp sites at the park are nicely laid out and are quite posh. Most of the sites are for campers, not tents, and have electricity. I was impressed by the number of people that camp with satellite dishes attached to their campers.

I haven't camped in 15 years so it was a lot of fun but we weren't counting on the temperature being over 100 degrees. The State Park has a water park for diamond hunters to cool off in and we certainly appreciated it after setting up camp.






















We went into town for dinner and I had a chicken fried steak served on a platter. The bowl of gravy was larger than the salad. I would love to know how they managed to make the french fries taste like hash browns. We also had french fries at the park the next day that were deep fried in chicken fried steak batter. I didn't know you could make french fries even more fattening but they certainly were tasty

The walls, blinds and every surface but the table tops were covered with patron's signatures. The front message board had a sign for carry concealed class.






















We went back to the tent and laid down directly on tent floor so that the the ground could draw off some of the oppressive heat.

We heard chittering as soon as it got dark and Alethea took the food off the hanging hook and placed it in the car trunk. An army of raccoons started investigating other peoples coolers; you could hear them being opened and dropped shut. The next day I got to clean up Tootsie Pop wrappers all around the tent, we didn't have any food but they picnicked by us anyway.

I don't know if it was from the Arizona fires but the moon was orange with a red rim, sort of like our eyes looked the next morning.






















Alethea went to the diamond fields the next morning and I remained at camp drawing one of the woodpeckers that woke us up. They started their party after the raccoon rave broke up.






















Alethea went to the diamond fields and discovered that it had rained all the previous week and the area was a huge mud pit. Clay covered shoes can weigh 20 pounds and it sticks like glue. She lasted less than a half hour in the 105 degree heat, it was 8:00 in the morning. We hung around camp for awhile and packed up.