Mississippi & Arkansas

John Kyle State Park

John Kyle State Park on Sardis Lake MS

After a few days near Nashville TN we traveled west to Memphis TN and then South to John Kyle State Park just over the border near Sardis, Mississippi. Beautiful park, nearly empty and with rather unique hookup arrangements that required us to purchase a 30 Amp extension cord and an extra water hose.

Our campground was just below the huge earthen dam that creates Sardis Lake. The lake beside our campground fills the depression made in creating the main 3+ mile dam.

Tom and Zoe Bozeman

A main attraction here was the opportunity to spend a few hours sailing on Sardis Lake with Tom Bozeman.in his boat. Tom was one of our students at Dalat School in Malaysia. He lives in Memphis TN where he teaches in a public elementary school.

Tom, his wife Zoe, and son Tyler made our visit memorable visiting us at our campground, worshiping with us at their church in Memphis, treating us to a Memphis BBQ lunch and, of course, the sailing. Thank you.





Parker Creek Campground

Lake Greeson from the viewpoint where we detached
the Subaru to search for the campground

From John Kyle State Park in MS we retraced our steps back to Memphis TN, crossed the Mississippi and headed for Arkansas. Our campground was located on Lake Greeson near Murfreesboro AR. We had a little trouble finding it. Some signs talked of the entrance to the campground being closed. We parked the motorhome and looked for the campground in the Subaru. Eventually by trial and error we found the road that took us to the campground, retrieved our motorhome and settled in. The camp host seemed convinced there shouldn't have been any confusion in finding the campground!

View of edge of Lake Greeson in front of our campsite

This was another beautiful site right on the lake. Especially enjoyed watching a blue heron and several geese that showed up each day right in front of us.

Searching for a diamond in the plowed field at
Crater of Diamonds National Park

We had two main rockhounding expeditions while camped here. Murfreesboro AR is the home of Crater of Diamonds National Park. We spent a morning here. Picked up a few pieces of jasper but no diamonds. On average two diamonds are found each day and the average size is about the size of a match head. Most of the searchers are one-time visitors but there are others who are there every day to pay their fee and hope they will find one of those larger diamonds of a few carats size.

The other expedition was to a quartz crystal mine. We paid a fee which allowed us to collect all the crystals we could get in a 5 gallon bucket in a two hour period of time. The "mine" was a surface mine where equipment has exposed quartz seams in the rock where crystals may be found. The ground surface sparkles with pieces of crystals and the guide quickly found a few whole crystals with just the point exposed. Although we found some nice crystals, a five gallon bucket was far more than we needed for our finds!