Answers to questions

Sorry I'm such a slacker and haven't been answering anyone's questions. I've set it up to receive email messages. I don't know if you all get an email whenever someone posts to your comment, so I'm doing it this way. Here's some of the answers.

First of all, the pictures really don't do it justice, as usual. The scope of this place is absolutely amazing. You can look out over the sea ice, and see mountains that are 30 miles or more away, and it looks like you could walk there in a few hours.

The penguins and other birds haven't made it close to town yet. Last I heard, the closest emperor penguins were about 14 miles from town. I hear they make it closer, but they don't come right into town normally. Although, when the sea ice runway gets too thawed out, we have to open the snow skiway, and that's when we'll supposedly see more wildlife, and have to move them out of the way of the airplanes coming in. They have some birds here called skua's, which are total scavengers. I hear they are like big brown seagulls, only more aggressive. I have heard that they wait on the roof of the mess hall and if you leave carrying food, they'll swoop down and try to take it from you. Evidently, they know what a sandwich looks like and will do what ever they can to take it from you.

The base is on the edge of the continent, right on what is called the Ross Ice Shelf. The sea ice will partially melt, and the rest will be broken up by ice breaker ships in January or so, since that is how the base gets most of it's heavy supplies. Part of the ice is permanent, and several hundred feet thick. The annual sea ice melts every year and then reforms in the winter, and is only about 5-10 feet thick, but it is so cold, it is more solid than any ice that ever forms back home. We walk on it and even drive on it (it is what my plane landed on Saturday), but later in the season it will get soft and we won't be allowed on it anymore. They do have an ice pier which is thicker ice and what the freight ships tie up to in January. It's neat to see the ice without any snow on it. It froze in such a way (and I can't remember exactly what makes it do this) that it's actually blue.

I am at McMurdo Station, on Ross Island. On a map, if you find New Zealand and draw a line down, there is a small indentation on that part of the continent. McMurdo is just to the right of the farthest in point of that indent.

There are no polar bears or walrus down here. They are in the Arctic, near the North Pole. The only wildlife we have are penguins and seals, and the fish in the sea. The penguins don't wander around town normally, but last year I heard they had one who they thought had heat stroke. It was 50F and he was wandering around like he was drunk. Once the ice breaks up, some people claim they can see orcas in the Ross Sea, but most of the time you don't see them till the moral cruise (the ice breakers take the whole town in shifts over 2 days) since we aren't allowed close enough to the shore line (it's usually still ice) to see them.

The sun is out most of the time, but still sets for now. It usually gets dark around midnight or so, and then it rises again around 3 or 4 am. October 22nd will be the last time the sun will set down here. After that, it will rise, go across the sky, and then drop down towards the mountains and just circle the sky. It'll do that till the middle of February or so, and then it'll start setting again. I think it rises for the last time sometime in March, but I'll be home by then.

As for blogging, I think this is the easiest way to do it..send me a bunch of questions and I'll answer them in a post. I don't know if you get notifications if someone puts in a comment after yours, but let me know if you do, and I can answer them that way.