400 Miles Later and we are in the beautiful Crater of Diamonds State Park in Murfreesboro, AR. We pulled into the camp site around 10:30 pm. After spending the usual 30 mins to set up the bus, Blair cooked Spegetti and enjoyed a well deserved meal after making a long haul for the day. This is the first night we were able to be in a campsite in a state park that was purely pitch dark, we were able to see the entire night sky. In the distance we heard Owls and Coyotes howling and hooting at the moon. We even joined in the festivities of singing in the night with nature by adding our own hoots into the mix. It was so wonderful to just be in nature, reconnecting with the night sounds and really living in the earths musical. Every animal has a special part of the theatrical experience. The Owls sing like a greek chorus. They comment with a collective hoot on the actions of the other animals. The Coyotes keep the story line moving and in this sense they are the protagonist. They have the loudest sound. Their song sings out and resonates though out the canyon we are in. We can hear one group directly in front but in the distance singing out to another pack far behind us. though we don't know what they are saying to each other you can tell there in an urgency to the howls. There are night birds chiming in the act with their own comments here and there. This went on for at least 2 hours. We sat in the dark and listened to the musical of the forest play all around us until it was time for sleep. 
We awoke the next morning to find that the completely full campsite we pulled into had been emptied out. This was weird to us as it was a Friday night. The site had said they were booked through the weekend. We didn't realize until after our morning hike that the corner of our campsite had not actually been cleared out, The campers had all just moved. We went a mile down the road from where we were parked and started realizing "I saw that car and camper last night" and after seeing/having moments and moments of the same thoughts we realized: everyone moved away from our camper.no harm, no foul. At least we have room to roam now.
We spent the next 2 days digging in the dirt at the Crater of Diamonds. Our original intention was to find my engagement diamond for my ring but after spending days in the dirt finding only rocks that look like potatoes and quarts we decided that the diamond for the engagement ring can come from a professional rock hound.There is an extremely nice hike down to the river nearby that has 3 workout stations along the path. They include pictures and descriptions of how to properly use the equipment and Jay and I played around on them for a while. The walk down to the river includes various signs telling you about the wildlife in the park and also includes pictures of wha to search for. It started drizzling on us on the walk but the forrest is so dense that we didn't really get wet it was just a beautiful soundscape.
In all I would visit Crater of Diamonds again, and next time I'll take the class instead of being too stubborn to learn how to properly dig in the dirt and find diamonds. The State park was wonderful and we were able to sit on the back deck and hoot with the owls and enjoy our breakfast with out the disturbance of others. I would recommend this state park to anyone who loves the outdoors and wants to try their hand at treasure hunting.
