It's Spring and we are back on the road again.

Our first volunteer trip of the year was to Utah. We worked at Edge of the Cedars Museum in Blanding UT identifying pot sherds and lithics. They gave us a full day of training and then handed us bags of artifacts to identify. We had three archaeologists there to help us and we had examples as well as a museum full of artifacts to study. We visited a site one day to practice in the field too.

Drawers full of pot sherds and lithics for reference.

In the evenings the archaeologists took us to a few important sites in the area. It was a great week! After a resupply in Moab we drove to Horseshoe Canyon for our week of interp for the National Park Service at the rock art panels. This was our 4th year so I was a little more relaxed about answering the questions we get from visitors but still nervous about the daily 7+ mile hike. We did fine though.

Cowboy Steve looking for wild burros in the canyon.

Bruce doing some cairn work at the Alcove Site.

We even had company, Thurman came over to visit and do the hike one day. It was fun to have some company hiking and camping there. We love being there but it was great to be back home too.

Now we are on the road to South Lake Tahoe to volunteer for the Forest Service at the Tallac Historic Site. This will be our first time to Lake Tahoe so we aren't sure what to expect. We will help get the site ready for visitors and then once open help run things.

We are traveling on Route 50 "the loneliest road in America" through Nevada. So far there hasn't been a lot of traffic but we did meet  Angela Hatton walking from California to Maryland, the length of Highway 50 to raise awareness for veterans and PTSD. #walkforvets She started in March and expects that it will take her 7 1/2 months. She is meeting with vets along the way and putting together photos and stories, possibly a documentary.

Inspiring young woman walking the length of Route 50

We stopped at Great Basin National Park and did a short hike, much of the park is still snowy. As we continued west we crossed many small mountain ranges, drove in and out of valleys with mining and ranching history. Near Fallon we visited Grimes Point rock art site. Basalt boulders with old petroglyphs covering them on what was the shore of an ancient lake.

Petroglyphs here can be as much as 7000 years old.

Bruce at a cave excavated in the 1970's.

So, there are not many trees in parts of Nevada so I guess that when you have one you must use it well, like to hang your shoes on. Yes, a shoe tree!

We saw two shoe trees but it was raining when we passed the second one and we didn't stop for photos.

Some of the shoes looked pretty good but I was afraid that it would be bad karma to take any!

We leave Nevada tomorrow and are looking forward to seeing our California home for the next month.