Happy New Year!

One of the South Pole Traverse vehicles that I fueled. They're huge!
Ice Caves
Route marker flags. Dave and the vehicle that our Fuels group took to visit Captain Scott's Terra Nova Hut at Cape Evans. It was a slow but awesome ride!
The inside of the hut is perfectly preserved because it's so cold and dry here. It's eerie, almost as if his crew just vanished days ago. Their clothes, food and medicines still laid out. Amazing place! So far we've been lucky enough to tour the Cape Evans, Hut Point and Cape Royds huts (that one is one of Ernest Shackleton's huts, and it even has family portraits.)
Happy New Year! We enjoyed all the bands from Icestock and dancing afterwards, and are having a mellow weekend. I decided to post some older pictures from our trip to Cape Evans when Dave got back from Marble Point a few weeks ago. It was a departmental trip and we took what is more or less a tank to get out there. A three hour trip each way, well worth it! Generally when the ice warms and there are lots of melt pools, it's safest to take tracked vehicles because their weight is more distributed and they're less likely to get stuck. We'd been there before, about 8 years ago, but it's always a pleasure to slip back into history as the huts are perfectly preserved.
It's pretty exciting to think about a start to the year, and I like the thought of 1-1-11! We'll likely listen to a bluegrass band tonight and play cards tomorrow. I'll be at the airfield for an extra week since one of the Master Sargeants wrote a lovely thankful email about me, and Dave is in town on light duty still. Our fuel tanker gets here January 27th with nearly 5 million gallons of fuel for us to offload. Dave will be on nights for that and I'll be on days. And this all means that the Icebreaker Oden will be showing up soon, cutting a channel into the ice so the other ships can arrive. It's springtime, and we love and miss all of you!