Last Friday after lunch, Mason, Morgan, Susan and I piled into the minivan, headed toward our cabin in Beavers Bend, Oklahoma. The cabin is in Hochatown, 10 miles outside of Broken Bow. As I already mentioned, Beavers Bend is a four-hour drive from our home in Yukon, and two hours shy of the Crater of Diamonds State Park in Arkansas. Susan’s family like to stay in this particular resort overnight before heading out to dig for diamonds the following day. I decided to tag along this time. I had no intentions of digging in the dirt for diamonds, but hanging out in a cabin while everyone else was gone for a few hours sounded pretty relaxing to me.<\/p>\n

Roadtrips aren’t as boring as they once were. Games of “Licence Plate States” and “I Spy” have been replaced by movies and videogames, thanks to the flip-down LCD screen in Susan’s Odyssey. Mason played Xbox during much of the four-hour trip while Morgan either slept or played with dolls. When it was time for Mason’s nap we shut down the Xbox and put in a Little Einstein DVD, which Morgan loved. I can’t imagine travelling any other way. As I mentioned last time, several hours into the trip we took a minor detour and swung by my Aunt and Uncle’s house down in Antlers, Oklahoma. We had a good time stretching our legs and catching up with family. After a little over an hour we all piled back into the van for the final leg of our trip, arriving at the cabin just after seven. Late Friday night (around midnight, I think) the rest of Susan’s family arrived. I was already fast asleep by then.<\/p>\n

The ten of them (everyone but me) got up early Saturday, piled into Susan’s van and Becky’s Rodeo, and headed out to the diamond dig. Figuring that it’s a two-hour drive to the park and that they would spend four hours there, I guessed that I would have around eight hours to kill. As you already saw, the minute everyone else hit the road, I hit the hot tub! Even though it was in the 50s, the water was 105 degrees and felt great. While I was soaking\/floating in the tub several critters including a big walking stick and a curious cricket crawled over to find out what was going on. I snapped a few pictures of them while I was there (photo link at the end). After half an hour or so I got bored so I went back in the cabin, dried off, got dressed, and decided to head into Broken Bow for a few minutes. My neice was nice enough to leave the keys to her Mustang in the cabin for me, so I hopped in the ‘stang and drove the ten-miles back into town.<\/p>\n

Broken Bow is quaint, and small. There’s a big Wal-Mart, a few country restaurants, a few fast food places, and lots of furniture stores (from all the local lumber business). If you want a rocking chair, bench, or cabin made out of logs, Broken Bow is apparently the place to be. I found a motel with a big “Free Internet!” banner where I parked and made my last blog entry from, thank you very much. On my way into town I passed a billboard that read “Choctaw Casino – 3 mi ahead.” Turns out, “3 mi ahead” is pretty much the edge of town. All I had intended on doing was checking out the town and seeing what all was there, but the casino sparked my interest. I decided to stick my head in and see what they had. Inside there were no table games, only slot machines. I sat down at a quarter machine and put $20 in. Three pulls later, I had won $50! I printed out my voucher and was going to leave with the cash when I passed the dollar machines. I decided to play the $50 I had just won on the dollar machines. My gamble worked out. Just a few pulls later I won $260 on the dollar machine I was sitting at! In about five minutes I had won over $300. I cashed out and left with my winnings. I filled the Mustang up with gas, bought some chips and beer from a convenient store, and still had around $280 in cash left. Thank you, Choctaw Casino!<\/p>\n

The rest of my alone time in the cabin was pretty refreshing. With no one else around I had the Xbox all to myself. One funny story is I played Land of the Dead (a zombie game) for the first time. In the game, you start out in a log cabin out in the woods. “Hey, *I’M in a log cabin out in the woods!” I thought to myself. In the game, zombies begin sneaking past your cabin’s windows. I kept noticing things outside the windows. After ten minutes or so I was watching out the windows more than I was watching the television! I finally quit playing it and went back to playing Ghost Recon 2 and Need For Speed: Carbon instead. While playing I listened to the OSU football game on the radio. I read on a book, listened to some music, and had a really refreshing time. I even (gasp) walked around in the woods for a while, taking some pictures and just experiencing nature (yuck).<\/p>\n

Eventually, the gang arrived back at the cabin. I had my casino winnings spread out all over the table. I told Susan I’m sure my paltry winnings paled in comparison to all the diamonds they found. Of course they didn’t find any. Casino 1, Diamond Dig 0. A few of us played Uno for a while. We grilled hot dogs and hamburgers out on the grill. The Uno game eventually transformed into a game of Blackjack (I acted as the dealer), and eventually that changed into Texas Hold ‘Em (Susan brought our case of chips). After playing poker for an hour or so we switched back to blackjack. I think everyone had a really good time — I know I did. We played until someone eventually broke the bank. I think it was only 10pm or so but it felt much later. I slept hard.<\/p>\n

Sunday morning, after a big breakfast, we loaded up the cars once again, said goodbye to the cabin and headed back to civilization. It’s funny how weekend getaways never sound like much fun to me before hand, but I always end up having fun at them. I think everybody had a good time. On the way home we stopped at Mazzio’s in some small podunk town about 30 minutes after church had left out. They were serving their lunch buffet so we had that; I’ve never been a fan of Mazzio’s buffet but it was okay. We finished off all the sugary snacks and candy we had brought in the car along the way, and we all arrived at home with tummy aches. <\/p>\n

Tons of photos: http:\/\/robohara.com\/albums\/diamond_dig_2<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last Friday after lunch, Mason, Morgan, Susan and I piled into the minivan, headed toward our cabin in Beavers Bend, Oklahoma. The cabin is in Hochatown, 10 miles outside of Broken Bow. As I already mentioned, Beavers Bend is a four-hour drive from our home in Yukon, and two hours shy of the Crater of Diamonds State Park in Arkansas. Susan’s family like to stay in this particular resort overnight before heading out to dig for diamonds the following day. I decided to tag along this time. I had no intentions of digging in the dirt for diamonds, but hanging… (read more)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}