Tent Island

I have had a fantastic last couple of days. I think I wrote an entry on Thursday morning and was just going to have a pretty boring day. Nothing exciting when da da da daaa.... opportunity arrived! In the form of an invite to ride out to tent island with the albedo science group to help them collect their instruments and basically get out of town for an afternoon. It was fantastic! I took so many pictures that there is no way they are all going up here. I'll give you an overview of the afternoon.

At 1:00 pm, Mahesh and I met Rich, Regina and another Rich to head out to their tent island instrument site. We rode in a Piston Bully, I got to ride in the front. :) This is a really fun little machine and I would have loved to take it offroading but they didn't let me.
The site was a ways out of town but it was a fun and beautiful drive. Here is our destination, Tent Island.
When we got to the site, Regina and I drilled an ice core. An ice core is a sampling of the ice and the drill cores out a cylinder shaped chunk as deep as we want to go. Here I am going to town! Beast!
This is Regina taking temperature measurements from the ice core.
Rich and Mahesh went out to collect all the flags that were put out for location markers. Here is one of the many nice shots of them and Mount Erebus.
This is Mahesh, Rich and Rich, he let us come out with them.
We finished early with all of us working at gathering the samples and instruments so we had some time to play and take pictures. The next couple of pictures are of me being silly. I was excited. This one is titled "Antarctica!"
Then I rolled on the ice.
And of course the shot of myself taken by myself.
Mahesh and the piston bully. Rich is on top and Regina is loading gear.
When we were driving out to the island, we saw some seals by the shore. Rich drove us closer to see them when we finished. Seals!
They look like big slugs.
We walked around a bit, looking at the seals, checking out some cracks and just enjoying the day.
Rich then took us around around the island the other way to see some new scenery on the way back.
Mount Erebus.
It was awesome. We had a great day too, the weather was beautiful, wind wasn't strong and it was just fantastic. Like I said I took tons of pictures and this is just a fraction but I'll show everyone more when I get home.

Dinner that night was super good too. They had lettuce!! and broccoli! and corned beef! and purple cabbage! and best of all, strawberries!! Even chocolate covered strawberries!! It was so yummy! Love it! When I get home, I'm eating a bunch of bananas and a box of strawberries.

Friday was just as awesome as Thursday but I'm going to save that for an entry tomorrow. Keep you all in suspense of the awesomeness that Friday was. Weather update - super windy and getting windier. It's -4F and there is supposed to be a beast of a storm coming this way. I'm really hoping for a Condition 1 since there hasn't been one since I've gotten here. Woo big storms!! We are supposed to get gusts of 70 knots too. That's tropical storm speeds! :)

Another tidbit before I leave... it is light out most of the day now. I think there is still some dark at 1 to 3 am but even then there is some light on the horizon. The sun just moves in a circle above the horizon. Oct. 22 is the last sun set until autumn. We are going to watch it if the weather is nice.

Enjoy the pictures and come back tomorrow for another exciting adventure! Cheers!