This week, Diane and I flew in from Dallas, Texas with Michael Smith (from Arizona State University), who was coming to visit Caracol. I had been up at the Tulane Symposium from Thursday through Sunday. All of us met in Dallas on Sunday and flew to Belize on Monday, arriving in the early afternoon. Brian Woodye had left the Mahindra in the airport parking lot, so we simply exited the airport and then drove into the site, arriving ca. 5 PM. We were informed that we had just missed Tiffany Trump, who visited Caracol on her vacation. Backfilling of the three residential groups that we had excavated during the field season had been completed while I was in New Orleans. On Tuesday morning, Diane and Mike went up to the summit of Caana to see our deep plaza trench; Diane took final photos of the excavation; then, backfilling started in earnest and the trench was fully backfilled by noon on Friday. I also spent 7 hours on Friday driving Mike out of Caracol to the airport, meaning Brian briefly in Belize City for a grocery pick-up, and then driving back into the site (a long day). Last year the Institute of Archaeology had asked us to keep our areal excavation over the Preclassic building west of Caana open; we carefully tarped the excavation to protect the area until it could be stabilized. In the off season, it was not stabilized and the tarps were stolen, so we asked the IOA for permission to backfill this area and moved the men there on Friday when they were done with Caana; they also worked on this backfill project all day Saturday. While the men were backfilling, all of the staff were busy processing artefactual materials: cataloguing, numbering, drawing, gluing, and photographing everything. By the end of Saturday everyone was dead tired. On Sunday we rested and had our delayed Baron Bliss barbeque. Brian Woodye came in for the barbeque and took 8 of the men out a day early; he also brought cold coke for everyone. As usual, the Caracol barbeque chicken was superb, especially with the home-made barbeque sauce. In the afternoon after Brian had left, it got exceedingly hot and the clouds threatened rain. There was thunder in the distance, but no rain. Now, on to the final week and the push to finish everything….