Woke up early again this morning after nearly nine hours of uninterrupted sleep. Still woke up feeling a bit out of sorts, but much better than all of yesterday. At least today I don't feel like throwing up. The guts are still all tied up in knots, but even that is an improvement over what had been going on.

    So I did manage to get up and wander out to the living room and start some water to boil for a cup of tea. Have been jut 'snacking' on and off for most of the day.. No real meals yet as every time I eat anything my stomach starts to gurgle and then tie itself into knots again. But I could at least be up and I had an okay time checking email and facebook. Also spent some time watching some news shows as well as the Craig Ferguson show. That guy just cracks me up most evenings.

    Took a good long nap around noon and then felt good enough after getting up again to go out and deal with the hot water heater. The Temp. and Pressure valve slipped right in without a single problem. Got it all wrapped up with Teflon tape and my pair of channel locks was more than adequate to twist it into its place.

   It took a little more effort to take the old anode out, but even then the new 1/2 socket drive busted it free and it came right out after that. There was still plenty of anode material left on the old one to last another couple of years, but since I already had a new one ready to go it seemed dumb not to put it in right now and keep the other one as a spare just in case. There did seem to be a bunch of material that came out when the existing one popped out so I am wondering if some of it may have been what plugged up the last valve. So it was probably good that I drained the tank one way or another. It also took a few moments for me to get the new one started, but it finally screwed into place as it should.

   Once that was all done I took the time to remove the old plastic housing piece where the shore power electrical line comes out the side of the trailer and replaced it with the new one I bought the other day. It went on fine, but it is obvious that it was smaller than the one I took off so I will have to watch it for a while to make sure it is all going to work out okay.

    Once it was all done and I had the metal shroud screwed back on to the hot water heater it was time to check it out and see if it was going to work. Flipped the switch and after its usual several second delay you could hear the propane igniting and the flame blowing. Sure enough, in only a couple of minutes there was warm water at the kitchen sink. Once the whole tank was heated the system shut off as it was suppose to and it was time to go take a nice hot  shower. Ahhhhh! that sure did feel good. I'm feeling good about the whole fix and I will be sure to post a photo of the whole system at some point.

    In the meantime I plan to take it easy for the rest of the night and maybe watch a movie. Not sure what yet, as I have about a dozen or so that I haven't even taken out of their plastic covers. For right now though, here are a few pictures and commentary from the day I spent visiting the Moundville Archaeological Site in Alabama a week or so ago.

Moundville Archeology Museum - November 2013

Built and lived in by Native Americans, Moundville came into being sometime around 800 -1,000 years ago, 1050 - 1200 A.D., by a group of southeastern Indians known as Mississippians. More than 1,000 of them lived here on the banks of the Black Warrior River over several hundred years. As part of their culture they built large earthen mounds that they used as living and religious sites for their leaders.



The millions of cubic feet of dirt for the mounds had to come from somewhere. Some was scrapped off of the top of the land each spring as the nearby river would flood. Other soil was likely excavated out of nearby areas that then became water reservoirs used for watering their crops as well as possibly for growing captured fish. This shows one of those ponds now nearly filled in by dirt and weeds.

At least 26 mounds are known to occupy this site. Some are only a few feet tall while the one at the back of this picture is nearly 60 feet. Thought to have contained the living and religious quarters for the towns elite Chief and his family, it looked out on all of the rest of the town to the south.

A few more mounds as seen from the top of the highest hill. It is thought that most of the other mounds held the religious buildings for small families or groups of townspeople.

This period in time corresponded to the raise of agriculture in the U.S. All across the continent people were raising large crops of maize, or corn, as well as beans and squash. This town of about 1,000 probably acted more as a trade and religious center with growing food as being almost secondary. Within several miles however were about 10,000 other natives who grew or hunted most of the food for the people living in the area.  

From the top of the tallest hill, the Chief's Hill, you can see most of the rest of the site. At a little more than 300 acres, it was not a huge site, but was still the 2nd largest town built by the Mound builders that is known. The largest one being the one in Cahokia in Illinois.

The second largest mound in the town is thought to have held a religious site for everybody in the town.

Another view of the second largest mound. The whole site was once enclosed by a wooden wall or palisade that encircled the town on 3 sides while the 4th was protected by the cliffs and river. Made up of more than 30,00 mature tree's, the wall was thought to be as much as 10-12 feet tall and had portions of it that would project out in front of it by a few feet to give archers a clear shot of anyone trying to climb up the outside of it.

A couple of smaller mounds and one of the ponds that is left over. While these mounds don't look like much just think what it meant to build them when the tool you had was either made of a wooden stick or might be some buffalo shoulder bone, and you had to carry all of the dirt in hand made baskets.

One of the shortest, and biggest mounds in the area, is this one on the back side of the highest mound. It is thought that some of the towns elite might of called this area home.

The Archeology Parks Museum building was built by the CCC's, the Civilian Civil Corp, between 1937 and 1939, it took over 6,000 man days of labor to complete. Built of hand mixed and poured concrete it was built during a time when many of the countries people were out of work and desperate to make an honest living. Not only did they build this building, but they also helped excavate over 45,000 s.f. of the site helping to unearth over 1,000 whole ceramic pieces. They also cleared brush and trees from the mounds and the rest of the site, as well as building erosion control structures on the site. Sounds like a real win-win situation to me.

At the entrance to the museum were several tall poles with carved statues on the top. I found them very pretty and compelling.

Here is another one. It should be noted that the carvers of these statues are all Native Americans.

One last close-up.

Inside the museum you have the usual displays of items that have been discovered on site so far. The objects on the wall are all axe heads of one material or another. The two upper ones are of solid copper which could of only come from the Great Lakes Region of the country as that is the nearest location of large deposits of pure copper. The two at the bottom are stone and the middle one is a single piece of some jade like looking stone. I'm thinking some form of really fine grained granite or pitchblende. The design on the pot is also significant having to do with some type of bird design.... but I kind of forget what it all meant after all this time.

The museum also had a couple of large dioramas showcasing their interpretation of the wedding between the chief's son of this town to the daughter of a chief from another town along the river. There seemed to be a lot of political intrigue that went on in the elite class. Above from the left: the Chief, his wife, also a very important person in this society, the son and the head Shaman.   

Dressed in their finery, note the solid copper amulets or gorgets as well as fine furs and beads and shell accouterments.

Coming into the town on a palanquin carried by 4 picked warriors, the betrothed daughter is being greeted by a dancer and in the back, another man playing a flute.

Surrounded by presents to be given to the in-laws, this town was known for its artisans. It used trade in pottery, leather, stone and metal work to trade around the country for what they didn't have in their own area.   

I have to say that the mannequins they used were very lifelike. I would not of liked to have met this guy in the dark.

The dancer/singer sent to meet  the new princess.

Some of the gifts passing back and forth between the two families. Note that we are talking mid Alabama here, far, far away from the coast or the Great Lakes Region, let alone the west coast, and yet there are items here from all of those area's. So trade was apparently going on very well several hundred years before the first Europeans were thought to have arrived in the area.

A view from the bank of the Black Warrior River near the west edge of the town.  

Looking down river from the town. The river is still being used to transport goods up and down the corridor.  

Last view. By 1300 A.D. the town has changed drastically. Most regular people had abandoned the village and it had turned into a sacred burial site for people from all around the area. Within a few more generations even these last people were gone and the site abandoned completely. Today the great majority of the site is still unexplored and will likely remain that way until some new method of unobtrusive exploration is found. Still... it makes you wonder what is still lying out there under the surface just waiting to be discovered.