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.

Disney Cruise Line is mak­ing it eas­ier to expe­ri­ence the magic of Disney Cruise Line on the West Coast with a spe­cial “Kids Free” offer on seven-night cruises to the Mexican Riviera start­ing January 2011.

“Jump in,” said Comal County Judge Danny Scheel, as County and city offi­cials, local busi­ness own­ers and res­i­dents jumped in the Comal River to cel­e­brate reopen­ing the city’s pop­u­lar rivers. The Guadalupe River from Canyon Lake through the city of New Braunfels and the Comal River are open again for the summer.

The Midwest’s largest zipline tour, Ozone Zipline Adventures, reopens for the sea­son on April 1. Much like zipline tours in exotic des­ti­na­tions, Ozone Zipline Adventures is an eco-adventure that com­bines the thrills of fly­ing through the tree­tops at heights of 200 feet above the val­ley floor, with out­door recre­ation, envi­ron­men­tal edu­ca­tion and his­tor­i­cal awareness.