Amazing!

Hello to all of you back in the world of reality. If you don't want to hear my political views skip the first paragraph. Man has a lot happened since I last wrote. We have a new president elect, which I think is amazing. Regardless of your political views you have to admit that the United States electing a Black Man (Even though he is only half black) president is a monumental occasion. I am quite impressed with our country and proud. At the same time I'm a little bit unimpressed with the state of California. It's quite amazing me to me how progressive our state likes to think we are yet we still can't allow people to marry whomever they wish. I understand the argument that marriage is a religious term and that homosexuality is a sin, but if you take emotion out of it and look at it in the sense that our constitution has a stipulation that church and state be separate then outlawing gay marriage based on religious views is wrong. And if we can't separate our religion from the word marriage then the legal title shouldn't be marriage. Anyways I'll get off of my soapbox and get to the stuff that I am really down here to share with you all.

Saturday night was AMAZING! That secret trip I referred to in my last post took place and can I say how completely mindblowing the entire experience was? I mean, simply put if I got injured and had to go home tomorrow I wouldn't be terribly heartbroken. I don't know how much cooler of an experience I can have down here. So let me start and tell you about it.

The trip that I took went to two different locations down here. It lasted about 6 hours and was by far the best six hours of my entire trip so far. The first location was Cape Evans. If you don't know anything about it from the name a brief history first. When the first, original explorers came to Antarctica and decided to take a trip to the South Pole this is where they set up their base. It's called Scott's Hut at Cape Evans. Essentially visiting Scott's Hut is like going back about 100 years. Because of the cold temperatures down here, nothing has deteriorated all too much at Scott Hut. The original food and bed's and even a dead penguin are pretty much fully in tact. The penguin was being set up to do some sort of an autopsy on it but they never got to it. In fact Scott's group all died, horses dogs and all. Thanks to the Kiwi's (who have a preservation team) we are able to tour the hut and see how things were. The pictures I have posted tell a better story of the hut than what I am able to do. I may even have some info wrong, but if you are interested there are a lot of great books on it as well as stuff online. I was even given a book about the explorers which I intend to read very soon (thanks Aunt Jackie!) But I feel very lucky to have been able to go into this time capsule.

After leaving Cape Evans we were on our way to the ICE CAVES! However on the way to the ice caves we ran into a little Adelie Penguin. He was quite adorable to watch run down the ice road. We actually followed him for a bit until our driver manned-up and gunned it off the beaten road around the penguin. Once we were ahead of him we stopped and we all got out of the Delta (big ass van/truck type thing) and waited for the little guy to come to us. He came within about 10-15 feet it was awesome! I'm glad I don't have to leave the continent having the only penguin I see is one that's been dead for 100 years! It's extremely cool to be that close to the animal in the wild rather than at a zoo with a barricade separating us.

After the penguin siting it was time for me to go into the Ice Caves, breathtaking is all I can say. The natural light in the caves is that blueish hue you see in some of the pictures. Those are the pictures that were taken with the flash turned off. I feel really lucky to be able to see this because it is the first time in about 5 years that they have had them down here. In the past the water wasn't able to get into the glacier's to carve out the caves (which in a very brief way is how it is done). And since it is getting warmer down here, we aren't too sure how long these caves will hold up and how many people are going to be able to go and see them.

Not too sure what it is about tonight but I really don't have as much of a stream of consciousness as I usually do. I apologize! But in case anyone is wondering I no longer have the crud I feel fantastic and aside from a little homesickness I'm having an amazing time. I'm glad not everyone can come down here but I think that everyone should get to experience something like this at least once in their lives. I hope that everyone is having a good start to their week. Hopefully I'll have something new and exciting to chat about next week. If not I'll still blog but it will be a lot shorter.

Love and miss you all!
D!