Crater of diamonds park has a visiter center with a gift shop, rest rooms, identification counter rental counter and sceduled diamond hunting classes. there is a small water park there that was not open as well as a campground that was. when i go back i will bring. knee pads, a magnifieing glass, a hand trowel, a shovel, coffie thermos, water jug, boots, 2 five gallon pales, and lunch. I will rent the corse and fine screens as well the scirouca.and a wagon.out in the field are two covered pavillions with water troughs,near buy tables and bench seats. the object is to collect pails full of dirt, stones,mud ect. and use the water troughts and screens to separate the mud and dirt from the small stones. The small stones then go into the scirouca which is a round fine screen with a concave bottom. As the stones are bounced up and down in the water the heavy ones sink to the bottom of the screen (diamonds are heavy). Flip it over onto the table and the diamonds should be on top.Inspect with a maginfing glass. any suspect stones should be saved in a plastic vial (they sell them for a buck i think) bring to the identifation counter and they will tell you what it is. Most likely quartz jasper calcite not diamonds. save it any way. I think i threw out a small diamond becase it did not look like one. the next day as i was inspecting the display case at the visiter center i saw one that looked just like what i threw out! you can also surface search. best after a rain. or dry screen out in the field. best after a dry spell. I did not do eather of the last two because I was busy supplieing my mom and dad with material. The way to increase your odds of finding diamonds is to increase the amount of stones you screen. here is the point. If you dig material out of the field at large you will get 25% stones and 75% dirt or mud. It takes time and effort to screen away the mud so finding material that is heavy with gravel is best. to do that, go to the far pavillion and keep going to the edge of the field. there you will find a small stream coming out of the ground and flowing down the grade. ( if it is realy dry, I doubt it will be flowing) I used the kneepads and straddled the tiny stream and used my hand trowel to scoop up mostly gravel from the bottom of the stream and fill my buckets. I also washed water up onto the banks. As the water flowed down it washes away the mud and leaves the gravel that i scoop up.When the buckets are pretty full (you cant imagine how heavy they are) I load them into the wagon and go back to the pavillion, with a suppercharged mixture of mostly gravel to screen. I understand that some people dig test holes looking for consentrations of gravel.Half the fun was talking to all the people screening around us at the pavillion. park opens at 8:00 am and closes at 5:00 pm. I found the staff helpfull and friendly. MUrfreesboro is a small town and has ok resturants and motels. Nothing fancy. When i am on my comuter at home the spell check saves me. I appologise for that and the punctuation. and questions feel free to ask or you can e mail me directly
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