Today we decided to mix it up a bit, and take a small detour. “Let’s visit Metropolis, home of Superman,” I sug­gested. Everyone said “OK, why not?”

On day four, we left our cab­ins at Caddo River Ranch for the final time and headed to Hot Springs, Arkansas to see the his­toric bath houses and beau­ti­ful moun­tains and forests that sur­round the his­toric town.

On Day Three we left our cab­ins on the Caddo River for a day trip to nearby Wegner’s Quartz Mine in Mount Ida, Arkansas. What we didn’t find in dia­monds yes­ter­day, we fig­ured we’d make up for in quartz today. We were right, and then some!

This morn­ing we headed out on our way to one of the high­lights of the trip: Crater of the Diamonds State Park in Murphreesboro, Arkansas, where we hoped we’d be dig­ging up dia­monds left and right.

Using the occa­sion of a fam­ily reunion as an excuse, we decided to plan a fam­ily vaca­tion with cen­tral Arkansas’ dia­mond and quartz mines as our focus. Our trip would include a stay at some rus­tic cab­ins along the Caddo River and a trip to his­toric Hot Springs, Arkansas.