Back to New River Gorge National River

Back in the fall of 2019, Tim and I had been talking with New River Gorge National River (NERI) about returning there in April 2020 for a two-month museum contract. Obviously, that contract had to be put on hold because of COVID-19. In mid-August 2020, however, the project was back on.

We left Colorado on August 18 and drove to NERI in the RV. We felt comfortable going there since we would be working by ourselves with little contact with anyone else. We arrived at our favorite volunteer RV site and scheduled our COVID tests, which were required before we could start work. Negative, as expected, and we began our contract on August 27.

Our RV Site at NERI

Since we had worked previously at NERI, we were familiar with the museum and what we would be doing. We spent most of our time cataloging items in the collection. We then photographed and labeled all the newly cataloged history items and rehoused all objects using archival-quality storage materials.

We found permanent locations for the items and reorganized both floors of the museum storage facility in the process.

Cataloging, Photographing and Organizing the Museum Collection at NERI

Because of COVID, we kept to ourselves, both at work and on our days off. Since we had previously toured the park, we didn’t feel too bad about not venturing out.

We remained at NERI until the end of October and headed back to Colorado on November 1.