Friday, August 31, 2012

McMurdo, at least for now, is surprisingly beautiful.  Temperatures are mild (around 0F) and the winds are low.  The Sun comes up for a few hours a day and the surrounding area is bathed in a twilight glow.  Truthfully, McMurdo itself isn't very pretty, but the area around us is majestic.  We can look across McMurdo Sound (still frozen) to the Prince Albert Mountains and just next to us is Mt. Erebus, a 12,400 foot active volcano with a constant stream of vapor coming from its summit.

Later in the year when things warm up the snow on the ground melts and the dust kicked up by the infamous winds will be a particularly abrasive volcanic type deposited over centuries by that same majestic volcano.  But about the time that happens I will have been flown off to the South Pole where there is no dirt whatsoever!

My sleep patterns are still wrong, with me dropping off to sleep at 6 pm and sleeping until 2 am, but I hope that will normalize soon.  Work days are long here - nine hours a day, six days a week.  Tomorrow is Saturday, a work day, but then Sunday is a day off for everyone... my first since arriving.

More later, and I hope to get some pictures Sunday to post here.

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