The area of Hot Springs, Arkansas is known for its crystals. So after spending our first day at Hot Spring National Park (more about that adventure in a separate post) we spent our second day mining for crystals.
There are so many mines one can choose to look for and take home these crystals. We settled on the lesser known mine Sweet Surrender Crystal Mine. Most of the other mining operations are commercialized and a free for all. You pay one price, the average is $20 person, they bring a big dump truck full of rock and dirt and dump it in a certain area. Then it is a free for all who are there to gather your crystals.
At the Sweet Surrender Crystal mine you dig in the area right along next to the owners. They are a great bunch of folks and even help you find crystals. If you miss one, they pick it up and give it to you. Which says allot about these folks, other places will pick it up and keep the crystal for themselves.
Anyway, Sandee and I arrived at the mine promptly at 9am and the fun began. We quickly found a number of small crystals and then moved on up to larger ones. The entire time Arron, helped us along, showing us what to look for and even pointed out pieces to add to our collection.
One word of caution, the summers here in Arkansas can be brutal as a case in point after about four hours of digging I started to get a little light headed and began to break out in a cold sweet. A sure sign of heat stroke. So I sat down for a good long while and drank LOTS of water.
By the time we decided to call it a day, we had collected about 200 pounds of crystals in various sizes. We still missed out on the big clusters but our finds for the day are still nice.
So if you like digging for crystals look up this mine out of MT Ida, Arkansas. They are a small time operation who are more than willing to go that extra mile for their customers.
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