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The Zees Are Home.


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5000 miles later, the Zees are home safe and sound.

Walking in Memphis

Took a tour of Beale street and heard a dozen outdoor jazz/blues bands within a space of two blocks. That's the entire extent of the famous Beale street strip. Had some spectacular BBQ at Rum Boogie and spent the evening drinking beer and soaking up the music. In the morning, Karen and Zack took a tour of Graceland, and now we're on the way home.

Hot Springs National Park

This place was about 40 minutes out of the way, and wasn't quite what we expected. The "National Park" was a building in downtown Murfreesboro. The hot springs were all capped shut to shunt the water to a row of bath houses. I think it became a national park because of the significance of the bathhouses, not because of the hot springs. We were thinking that we would be able to swim in the hot springs, so were in no mood to tour bath houses and read about which celebrities visited them over the years.

Crater of Diamonds National Park

The Zees are in Murfreesboro, AR



Crater of Diamonds National Park is the only Diamond Mine in the United States. It was assayed in the 1990's, and determined that there weren't enough diamonds for commercial mining. Now it's a park where people can come and try their luck finding diamonds themselves. It looked like there were about 100 people out there today. A few hard-core miners who rent cages for their equipment, but mostly tourists like us. The "diamond field" looked like a big plowed field of mud. They plow if every month to turn over the soil and give visitors a fresh look. The hard-core miners use a skinny iron probe about 6 feet long that they shove down into the mud. If it goes it easily, they try a new spot. They are trying to locate a layer of gravel. If they find one, they dig down to it and pan the gravel to find diamonds. The guy I talked to was at it about a year, and found 53 diamonds. On the day we were there, 4 diamonds were found; the biggest was 1.68 carats. We found a few likely candidates, but they turned out to be either quartz or jaspar.
Someone who was thinking put a mini-water park right in front of the diamond mine. The Zees couldn't resist the Siren's call and we only lasted a couple hours in the field. After cooling off in the pool, Karen insisted on going back to hunt more, but the Zees retreated to Baxter to watch a movie.

Mesquite, TX

Karen's brother Gary lives in Mesquite with his wife Leslie, son Jeremy, and his in-laws. We stopped there to catch up and have dinner. Very nice family. Gary is back row, far right. Leslie is next to Zeo, who looks like a mutant 8-year old next to her. I probably would have looked like a circus freak, so I volunteered to take the photo.

Hello World,
When I was at Las Vegas there was this wave pool and it was really fun. Usually it was just a regular pool but once in a while a huge wave came by and it was really cool. It was extremely hard to ride the wave but once in a while I actually caught it. Zeo was really good at it though.
Sincerely,
Zoe

lake towhe

We went to lake towhe. It was really fun. Me and Zeo got are head wet and Zeo dunked me. the water was just right. zacky caught a fish, but then zeo sqused his guts, then buried it alive. Zeo just wanted to end its misory.