Muddy Diamonds - Part 3

Today, we went to the Wegner Crystal Mine near Mt. Ida to dig for quartz crystals. It was only about an hour from our cabin, but it took slightly longer since we had to pull over so that I could throw up. I woke up with a migraine headache, which was bad enough, but on top of that, I also had a stomach virus, which was making me nauseous. I probably should have just stayed home, but I didn’t want to miss out on the dig. So, I suffered along.

I felt much better after I’d rid myself of everything I’d eaten for breakfast. And I was fine the entire time we were at the dig. The dig site was nestled into an open patch between a forest of trees. It consisted of long snake-like mounds of red dirt and rocks, curving back and forth. There weren’t nearly as many people here as had been at the Crater of Diamonds, so were able to stake off a section where nobody was and start digging.

This site contained mostly quartz crystals…the cast-offs from the crystal mining going on nearby. There were a lot of regular cloudy quartz in broken and chipped rocks, but we were looking for clear, roughly intact quartz with defined points.

Maybe it was because there was an almost immediate reward for their labor, but the kids were much more engaged on this dig. They enjoyed grabbing everything sparkly that they saw, loading up their bucket before we even left the parking lot! And once they knew what they were looking for, they even found some nice crystal specimens. Gauge found a decent size cluster of several crystals about the size of a drinking straw. Troy found a crystal about the size of his thumb! We didn’t pull out any record holders, but we all enjoyed ourselves.

I decided to eat an orange and a piece of bread as we left the dig site, the first thing that I’d eaten since breakfast. It didn’t take long for my wonky stomach to reject the offering though, and we were pulling over on the side of the road again. I decided to lay down when we got back to the cabin and give my stomach a rest. When I got up, I had a hotdog and a piece of bread, which ended up being an almost immediate mistake. I was running to the bathroom to relieve my stomach contents about 20 minutes later. It was a pretty miserable day, so I decided to just head up to bed early and watch a movie.