First, I got to go out to Phoenix runway (about a 30-minute drive from the base) for star-gazing with a stellar group of people. And that pun is intended, because wow, the stars. And the auroras! We got super-lucky with those, too.
Credit and thanks to Chef D for these photos (I'm in the puffy, yellow jacket):
Then, a couple days later (on July 19), the flight that was supposed to have been on June 27 FINALLY arrived. Twenty-five people were very happy to finally get to leave Antarctica, three weeks later than scheduled, and we got a roughly equal number of new people in, which meant fresh energy (and germs, but let's focus on the positive)--not to mention fresh food and mail, which is all just plain good for the soul.
And it was ridiculously exciting to see the plane come in, the specially trained pilots navigating by night vision and half the remaining station members out at Phoenix runway to greet the flight in their capacities as passenger transport, cargo, etc.
You can see the lights of the incoming aircraft in this picture as the three dots clustered together to the left and slightly up from the puff of the smoke coming from the power plant.
And here are some station-mates (with whom I was helping to receive and sort freshies as they were unpacked from a pallet on the galley dock) enjoying the first banana we've seen in months. This is a very big deal for us...
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