Update on the Last 20 Months

Yeah, I know. It has been a very very long time since my last post. I pretty much gave up on the blog a long time ago. At least I am here now and once again posting. We'll see if it lasts this time.

I thought it best to give an update on some of the things I've done in the past 20 months. Since the last post I've deployed twice more to the ice and have worked in Montana at Glacier National Park last summer. So I'll start off were I pretty much left off from my last post. I am probably going to have to do multiple different blogs to catch up. It may take a little time since I am leaving for another amazing trip in just a few days. I'm headed to Southern Africa for a month!! I am so very fortunate in the opportunities I've had over the last 3 plus years. For this trip I'll be traveling with Kris, my girlfriend over the last year. We are going to take some tours with intrepid travel and some of the highlights will be Cape Town, the Eastern coast of Africa, Lesotho, Durban, Johannesburg, the Okavango Delta, and Victoria Falls. It's going to be a busy month! Ok, back to where I last left off.

So, my third season on the ice I once again was a Shuttle Driver at McMurdo. It was another good season with some familiar faces and some from my original season that moved on to different things. I lucked out and roomed with my good friend Audrey for the season in a nice room in one of the upper case dorms. That got me out of 155 and a 4 person room and into a good sized two person room. It was a great experience living with a good friend. Sometimes it was a little interesting especially when she got a steady boyfriend.

At the end of season 3 I got to go on one of the best morale trips ever. I got to go to Cape Royds to the Adelie penguin ranch with a science team for a day. The main reason I was given the opportunity is because I volunteered to be a hut guide that year for trips out to Cape Evans and the historic hut built in the early 1900's during the great exploration trips. Out at Cape Royds there is another historic hut and the science team was hoping for a trained hut guide to let them in. That narrowed down the eligible people and because of my good performance as a Shuttle driver I was given the trip. Out at Cape Royds there are over 4,000 Adelie penguins and the area is a protected place listed on the Antarctic treaty. Typically only scientists get to go up and get close to the penguins. However, I lucked out again and the science team added me to they're permit allowing me to help them out. The project for the day was to tag the new baby penguins born that particular season. In order to do this the scientists would corral the penguins using some fencing, remove the adult penguins from the corral, and then begin to tag the young ones. My job in all of this was to help with the corralling and once the scientists tagged a baby penguin they would hand it over the fence and I'd take the penguin from them and put it down somewhere safe a little way away from the corral.

Yes, that's right - I got to touch and to hold baby penguins! That is unheard of for anyone who is not a scientist. There are rules that require a certain distance from any wildlife down in Antarctica and I got added to a very rare permit to actually touch the Adelies. It was Amazing!! Smeelly and Dirty! And Amazing!

Here are a couple pictures from the day.

All of that brown area is penguin poo! I did say it was smelly! It was also super noisy. Penguins like to squawk a whole lot.Can't beat that view

The corral used to get the penguins.
One of the adult Adelie penguinsOne of the baby Adelie penguins tagged
Me at the penguin colony

I also took some videos but they couldn't be uploaded. I let it run all night long and nothing happened.

That's all for this post. Will be working on some more in the coming months. It will be a slow process.