We had a short but successful collection day this week. The Trimble GPS device is fast in collecting the coordinates and very user friendly. I will have to go back and count but I believe we have already located more burial sites than are on the official county list. This is a little like comparing apples to oranges however, because the county does not track all of the small sites on private property but I wanted to emphasize that there are so many more than people realize.

One of the biggest challenges we have encountered when going out and collecting these points is to stay on task. Driving down some of the back roads of the county reminds you how truly beautiful the area is. I find myself stopping to take pictures that are completely unrelated to the project but the scenery is just so captivating.

Exhibit A…

The second issue we have come across is that there are still many unpaved “official” county roads. That is; these are county roadways, county maintained, and yet they are still just dirt roads. The official field research vehicle for this project does not appreciate us exploring these roads, especially after a heavy rain. Apparently we are not operating an All-Terrain Camry.

And finally, For the time being all the photo pages are named either for the common name for the burial site, the road they were found on, or after any signage located on the property. The “Official” names of the burial sites are used when available, but we will have to do some more research to be sure we get these names exactly right.