Gone Muddin'

One of the things that is required of archaeologists is to be able to work outside in adverse conditions. Little things like rain should not present obstacles. The work goes on.

Still, rain can present difficulties in certain situations. Like it did for us last Sunday morning.

It had rained a fair amount the night before but had pretty much stopped by morning. Not a problem. However, the final stetch of road along the river bottom to the site is nothing but dirt. Dirt which, immediately following a rain, turns to a nasty mud that is much like driving on ice.

We had only gone a little ways down the dirt road, fishtailing all the way even when moving at a crawl, before stopping to assess the situation.

I was in the 2nd truck in line. The rest of our caravan had lagged behind us a bit. While we were talking about whether to continue or not, this is what we saw happen ...

Yup, one of our jeeps had strayed into the ditch. But it gets better. The driver got out of the jeep, leaving the keys in the ignition and the engine running, and the doors had automatically locked behind him.

It gets even better still ...

Tow trucks won't come to the river bottom. They know what driving there is like in the mud and have more sense (more sense than us apparently).

After a 2 hour wait we finally got somebody to come out with a slim-jim and get the doors unlocked. Then we were able to push the jeep back out of the ditch and onto level road.

While waiting for assistance, the other vehicles had slowly left the dirt/mud road and parked at a boat launch where the pavement ends. Which meant, of course, that once the jeep was freed up most of us had to walk back to where the vehicles now waited.

Where we stood around, chatting and munching for a while ...

And then packed up the tools from the truck and hiked through the mud for over a mile to get to the site!

After that the day went fine. :D