I am posting my pics after I have a chance to make sure the trees are authentic. This one has the markings for the tie down thongs and another mark which appears to have been where the bend was forced by a forked stick.
Snake symbols were used to mark medecinal herbs sometimes, so it may be pointing to a place that had healing herbs. The snake symbol on the west side looks more like the Comanche's snake except that it is horizontal instead of verticle. The snake on the east side (the one in the picture) looks more like a "lightning snake" I have heard about. Take a look at this page, about half way down the page . . .
http://dirtbrothers.org/pbone/ --- there's a picture of a lightning snake at the bottom left which closely matches the one on the tree. Also, the west side of the nose almost looks like it was carved to resemble a reptile.
As for a GPS, Wal Mart sells the Garmin ETrex Legend for about $155 (on their web site $117.44 + postage). I love mine, and I downladed a FREE program which interfaces with it using USGS maps which are downloaded free of charge. The program is called "Trailguage" and you can download it here:
http://www.trailgauge.co.uk/download.html
What I like about this software is that, unlike Garmin's software which is quite good, there are features on the USGS topomaps that are not included in Garmin's map software. Also, you can download the aerial photos from Terraserver (which is where the US Topo maps are downloaded from) and it will create a 3D flyby based on the topo data downloaded with the maps. Have been very happy with it. Trailguage may not be compatible with other GPS units, it was created specifically to interface with Garmin's GPS units.
