Shade

June 17, 2013 Monday

I had a rough night -- too many days of stressing my knee.  It never did stop hurting during the night and I could hardly walk this morning.  We decided that I should stay behind and keep completely off my feet.  Pete brought me some pastries from the 5 a.m. breakfast and then joined the team on the march to Zion.

Before work can begin, all of the tools have to be brought to the site (having been cleaned up and moved out the night before).  The tools and equipment are stored at the residence of Yusef, the site foreman.  Yusef lives across a busy street from the dig site.  This is not a problem at 6 a.m., but at mid-day there's a mad dash to cross the street.

The job for today was to put up the shade tarps.  Pete reports that it was a complicated job and they had to do a lot of improvising.

But breakfast was important too.  The chow line is set up outside the fence.  This will work well because there are places to sit, and the site is kept clean.  That's Shimon in the foreground.

Tarps are starting to go up.  Lots of people were needed to hold the edges and corners.

The yellow tape marks the beginning layout of the grid system.  Doesn't that shade look wonderful?

The man on the left is raising one of the support poles.  The upper end of the pole has an upside-down bucket on it to prevent it from poking through the tarp.

Dr. James Tabor, walking past a stack of poles.  The poles are really pipes.

Marking more grids under the tarp.

We aren't the only dig members taking photos!  Note how they had to tie one of the tarps to the fence.

The city wall dates to Medieval times.