Bragg Family South

Given that it is only in the low 40s, and we've gotten over 5.5 inches of rain during the last 5 days, I think the cool, windy, rainy day outside is a strong hint for me to get back to blogging...Here's the final installment of the Bragg Family South 2012-13 Christmas/New Year's trip spectacular... After an interesting day in the wilds of Missouri, we got an early start headed towards my sister's house in Madison.  Our route took us past St. Louis, which meant we got to drive by one of the most significant archeological sites in the United States--Cahokia: As you can tell from the picture above, Cahokia is a mound site (actually, across the Mississippi River from St. Louis in Illinois), with many large earthworks constructed many hundreds of years ago.  The biggest mound in this picture, Monk's Mound (background) is huge--almost 100 feet tall and covering multiple acres.  The wooden posts you see in the foreground are part of...

I've decided to start posting pictures and story from our 2012 Christmas trip even before we've completed it to help spread things out a bit...given that we're still out of town, I may yet have pictures to come! Due to a nasty blizzard that swept in, we altered our original travel plans, which had us driving hard the Friday before Christmas to arrive at my sister's house in Madison...this change was a smart plan, for more than one reason--they got over 18 inches of snow in Madison, and we were able to use the delay to check out some parts of the country we had never seen!  The first half of this first day of travel had a courthouse them to it: The courthouse above is the historic one at Jacksonport, Arkansas, now part of Jacksonport State Park ( http://www.arkansasstateparks.com/jacksonport/ ).  An imposing brick structure, this town fell from prominence as the region developed, and the historic courthouse was used for a number of other purposes before being r...

Well, I decided to do another blog posting before we depart for our Christmas visits--that way I can concentrate on the Christmas trip when I post next in January.  The early weeks of December are filled with holiday-related cheer, including Beth's school art (above).  Usually, we have several Christmas parties to attend, including one for our local archeological society chapter.  This year, we changed the plans to make this feast "Jeter-palooza", in honor of the retiring UAM station archeologist Dr. Marvin Jeter.  Dr. Jeter, or "Bubba" as he prefers to be called, you may recall, is the person most singly responsible for getting Bragg Family South involved in archeology.  He is a wonderful (sometimes quirky) person with an almost inexcusable passion for the University of Alabama football program, and never hesitates at a chance to be goofy, as you can see with the hammed-up picture he took with our kids: Hope and our neighbor/station assistant archeologi...