Miller Mtn Mine and Fireworks over DeGray Lake…

My third day of vacation started late, I slept in after the long day of driving and then fireworks the night before, so Missy and I got a slow start to Miller Mountain Mine north of Hot Springs, arriving mid morning instead of early morning…and on arrival found only about half a dozen diggers already there digging away.

….the guy in the middle of the photo here, is Mark from the Joplin area, he and his wife Carol, were digging in the small pile next to me most of the day there and removed several nice single points from their pile, while I took several small clusters and plates, including a few smokies, from my pile…here is one of Mark`s finds…

…and some of mine….

I only meant to dig about five hours at the most, as my parents were driving down and I knew they would arrive about 4 pm and want to go to dinner by 5 pm…but I began finding so much great stuff, I wound up sticking around til 5 pm…and as soon as I got down off the mountain, my cellphone rang and my parents told me they were headed to dinner. I was at least an hour drive away so told them to go ahead and I would catch up later, I hadn`t even switched over to the other hotel yet and would have to clean up as well. I was very happy though, having filled four bags full of quartz crystals.

I drove back to Arkadelphia and saw my parents as soon as I pulled into the Quality Inn by the interstate, to check in for the remainder of the week. My parents were spending one night only, they would be staying at the DeGray Lake Resort Park Lodge the rest of the week for the family reunion, and I would have too, except for the fact that the Lodge doesn`t like pets inside. I showed the Manager and my mom some of the quartz that I found, seems the Manager of the Hotel is a big fan of quartz crystals too and mentioned that he had found some in his native country of India as well. From the way he talked, I believe he felt that quartz has healing powers too, as many Arkansans do as well.

I got checked in and cleaned up and then went across the street to Mickey D`s and got some supper and then headed to DeGray Lake to find a spot to shoot the fireworks that evening. I stopped at the Corps of Engineers picnic area by the Highway 7 Support Dam/Bridge and decided to shoot from there. I prob should have driven over to the Lodge and shot it from their grounds, but hindsight is always 20/20.

As it was, the only real problem shooting from my spot was that it seemed that very few bursts gained any real elevation, and its likely that I wouldn`t have thought that if I had been shooting from the Lodge lawn.Here are the boaters gathering on DeGray Lake prior to the sunset and fireworks show….

and I set up on the end of the peninsula there, close to a houseboat pulled up to the shore, which became part of my next sunset photo….

and as I waited for the setting sun to fade out, I was talking to a Hispanic family who had driven up from Hope, Arkansas…we talked til the sunset finally faded from the skies….

and then the show began…this show is set off by hand by members of the Bismarck Fire Department and other neighboring fire departments from one of the small islands behind DeGray Lake Lodge…but it was a very pretty show too…

and

and this one came out nice, the blur on the bottom left is a big party barge houseboat that was moving back and forth across the water all during the show…