Nov 28 – Thanksgiving

We took Saturday off to celebrate Thanksgiving. I woke up around noon to see almost everyone already up and to be greeted cheerfully by Emma. Peter was cooking turkey (apart from other stuff) , and Kristof was working on a veggie casserole. After breakfast, I decided to hike down valley to the east end of the lake. Emma decided to accompany me and we had a great time. It was very beautiful and quiet there – it was as if we had traveled back in time. It is rare to get such a sense of solitude and freedom. We came back and enjoyed  a very nice Thanksgiving meal and desserts cooked by Bill and Emma.

Peter working on turkey.

Myself on the way to the east end of the lake.

Emma. Behind her is the east end of Lake Bonney.

During summer, glacier melt-water flows into streams that feed into Lake Bonney. Emma walking by Priscu stream.

Thanksgiving dinner. Starting from left front and going clockwise - Emma, Vickie, Chris, Rachel, Peter, Kristof, Bill, Leah.

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Nov 26-27 – Fully autonomous missions

We  finished our major science missions – profiling and glacier exploration. Our next goal is to obtain reasonably good bathymetry of the lake bottom. We obtained partial coverage last year, and we will attempt to fill in the gaps this year. We ran fully autonomous missions with zero manual intervention during the missions.  These missions are easy for all of us and it was nice to relax and just watch the data flow. More on this later.

Bathymetry coverage of West Lake Bonney obtained during 2008 missions.