Bathing

Todd and Nicole invited me to join their Folsom dig in Colorado.

Colorado has some truly beautiful areas. Middle Park on the West side of the Rockies is one of those areas and this particular area hosts Barger Gulch with a Folsom site.

The crew camp is on a terrace above the Colorado River, that has many boggy areas.

There is a dirt road leading to a power relay station. We are camped just beyond the station. Not particularly pretty. We do look out over the Colorado River, there is a ranch below us with bison.

Because of the River's boggy areas we have mosquitoes. My! Oh my! Do we have mosquitoes! Lots of them! I hate mosquitoes! I cover myself with insect repellant.

They hang on the windows. They get in when I scoot in the door of my little trailer! At night I am a crybaby when they get near my ears and whine so I swat and spray before I go to bed. I always miss one.

They swarm in front of you, then leave with the slightest breeze. Thankfully, they are the slowest mosquitoes I have ever come in contact with and their bite doesn’t seem to itch for more than a second or two.

We set up a shower stall for our solar shower bags but who can stand the onslaught of mosquitoes?

I bathe in my trailer each night using the standby “Hospital” technique. I wash off the insect repellant, but the dirt seems to stay behind!

We are told we can shower at the RV site 12 miles away once a week, compliments of the expedition!

The showers are heavenly.

A shower with warm water!

Wash hair, dry off, dress, spray with insect repellant! Right back where you started - sans dirt!

For some reason the mosquitoes never join us at the actual dig site several miles away. While we are digging we don’t even think about them.

We are filthy from digging and screening. We get covered in the soft brown dirt of the area.

I wonder if Folsom people kept their bodies covered with dirt to keep the mosquitoes at bay? Seems to work!

Each of us has our own dig pit, a 1 meter x 1 meter. The first two years I had wonderful recoveries. The next year I claimed to have the control pit—no artifacts!

I have been invited to join the dig this year.

Will I go?

Will I battle the mosquitoes and the ‘control pit’?

To quote a local rancher, “You betcha!”