da TRIP Day One: Arkansas Crystal Mining and Hot Springs National Park

Crystal Mining was fun.  This is the haul from our morning's work.  There are LOTS more pics, but our connection is quite sketchy and uploading the niftier versions of the pictures is impossible, so I will muddle through.  When we get home, we will clean our new treasures with oxalic acid and make them bright and shiny.  I'll update that picture when they're super clean.  He did pretty good, but mostly da Creature played in mud and smashed pieces of shale.  da Sister got distracted and began playing with clay, but she is a budding sculptor, after all, so what do you expect her to do with perfect bright red clay?


Then, we went down the mountain to HOT SPRINGS NATIONAL PARK.  We visited the Fordyce Bathhouse and I can't WAIT to share
all of those pictures with you guys.   da Creature like drinking the hot  spring water, and da Sister was fascinated by what PT looked like before it became so sophisticated.  There were a lot of PT devices that looked downright torturish.  

 The Gymnasium was especially interesting to da Creature, because it was all hard and there weren't any safety mats or harnesses or anything "soft" and the weights along the wall looked like the things jugglers use. 

We went outside and walked down the promenade to Noble Spring to finish his JUNIOR RANGER booklet and then we went back in and did his interview of the day which won't upload because of the connectivity situation, but you will see tomorrow!

In the meantime....he did earn THIS:

And until tomorrow night, when I will have super great wifi and upload capacity, I give you.....

the end.  :)