Bragg Family South

What does the above head pot have to do with our Northwoods trip? We finally took the time to visit Hampson Archeological Museum State Park ( http://arkansasstateparks.com/hampsonmuseum/ ) in northeastern Arkansas. For years, we have driven past this spot and thought to stop by, knowing that this was an important archeological museum. After a quick visit to our friend and my co-worker Dr. Michael Shelton in Memphis, we headed northward. Rain in the Memphis area that day canceled our original plan of going to the Memphis Zoo, so finding that we had some more time on our hands, we finally decided to stop at Hampson . This small museum was established around a local doctor (Dr. Hampson ) who decades ago had been an amateur archeologist and had extensively excavated a large Mississippian-period village area, digging up a LOT of very impressive artifacts, including the head pot above. Dr. Hampson donated most of his collection to the state of Arkansas, which made a museum out o...

For those of you who know my sister Laurie's (a.k.a. "Lulu") penchant for taking pictures, you may enjoy seeing her work on the cover of the most recent Bulletin of the Eastern Native Tree Society ( http://www.nativetreesociety.org/bulletin/index_bulletin.htm , scroll down a bit to see the cover link with the mushroom on it). When I saw this picture of a morel that Laurie sent out, it immediately inspired me to use it as the cover photo. I am the editor of this bulletin for the Eastern Native Tree Society ( ENTS ), a group dedicated to highly precise measuring of large trees, the description and preservation of eastern old-growth, and a lot of other things nature-related. Membership is free, so check out ENTS ! (yes, the Lord of the Rings connection was deliberate...)

Sorry we haven't updated this blog as of late, but we're still recovering from the big western trip...and now we're preparing to leave on another!! We no sooner get used to Monticello living again, and now we're heading up north. The top picture shows the beginning stage of a trailer tear-down that we started after we returned from our western trip. On this northern trip, we're planning on doing some camping, and since we're not taking the truck, we needed someplace for all our camping gear. The solution: we torn apart then rebuilt the small wooden trailer we've had for years (the original wood had largely rotted away). Below is a picture of Hope contributing some painting effort to the trailer base: I'll have more on the trailer later... At some point during the first full week we were back, Stephen managed to bonk his head near his left eye on something solid, giving him a nasty shiner: (That's spaghetti sauce on his face, not blood!). I ...