First Week

 This week has been a lot of training. Learning how to take care of the instruments, launching balloons, making dinner on my night of the week to cook for everyone, making bread. Fun stuff!

 We currently have 5.6 hours of day light. Sunrise is at 11:30 and sunset is at 17:10. It hasn't been clear enough to get any good sunset and sunrise pictures.

We planted a few new seeds in the mini garden in the big house!! The last flight was supposed to come today but there was bad weather over the strait so it was canceled. Maybe tomorrow we will get that last shipment of freshies and the fall crew will head out and leave the station to the remaining 5 of us.  

A Break from the Wind

The wind finally calmed down and I was able to do a little walking around outside. Visited the berm (There is only one here!!!) and dug around a little bit with a few others checking for some helium cylinders. It was very nice to be able to see the horizon.

This is the big house.

This is the green house. Where I sleep.

The big white tent like building is the SOB, I forget what that stands for but that is where I launch the balloons from. The generator, heavy equipment shop and snow melter are also in that building.

Fuel tanks and bladders to get us through the winter.

The moon was out!

Great aurora show right before the night balloon launch. Weather balloons are launched twice a day. 9 AM and 9 PM.

It's nice that the skies were pretty much clear for the aurora.

Feels good to be back on ice and under the stars!

Arrival to Summit!

 Jammed into the Twin Otter with the Auxiliary fuel tank and some cargo.

 There are some pretty mountains down there!

 Last bit of Iceland sinking into the sunrise behind us.

 First bit of Greenland!

 Woah!!

 These are so majestic it's hard to believe they are real!!!

 A native Greenland settlement!

 Final approach after a beautiful two hour flight to the coast of Greenland.

  Stopping to refuel at Constable Point. Greenland is very white.

 Pilots discussing the not so great weather forecast..... but we might get a short window.

 The last of liquid water.

 Landed at Summit!!

This is taken from the "Big House" looking back towards the "Green House" which is the greenish building half buried on the left. Green House is berthing, bathrooms, back up kitchen, balloon prep and movie lounge. Big House is on stilts and has the main galley, workout area, lounge, food storage, games, books.

This is Big House. It's very cozy. I like it.

Nice and warm out!!!! But ever since we landed it's been nothing but very windy and low visibility. 

Here is my current room, I think I will be moving to one on the other side of the berthing module once the last flight leaves. This one is too close to the front door and the movie lounge (loud). It has a big window and a generously sized desk and lots of wall hooks for my many different jackets and layers. I am acclimatizing well and starting turnover. Thursday is official station closing, so I'll be very busy until I get into the swing of things. I will eventually take some pictures of the different areas withing the station and get better pictures of the outsides of buildings to give some context but visibility isn't great so it would be useless to do it now. The sun is rising around 8 am and setting around 5 pm but the days are very quickly getting shorter. Winter is coming! And I am excited!

Akureyri Weather Delay

 The ducks get the warm water after it flows through the public bath house!

 Delicious pastry called a Sara. Oh man. I could eat so many of these.

 Went for a walk around the harbor area. Super windy today. We are supposed to fly out tomorrow but it doesn't look promising.

 Found a fish!

 I think of we get delayed I'll go for a hike up near those mountains tomorrow.

 Trolls!

 Care for some whale? How about some horse?

 Well, we got delayed! Here is breakfast at the hotel, they have lots of options but this is super tasty. It's Skyr, which is Icelandic yogurt (I added the jam). So so so good.

 I found out the city buses are free. So I hopped on one and rode pretty much the entire perimeter of the town just to see it. And then jumped off when the bus was near the mountains. Which is actually only about about 1.5 miles away from the hotel and I started walking.

 Met some locals with nice hair.

 More came to say hi!

 I walked the road till I found a trail head. The summit of Mt Sulur was only 2.5 miles away but I had already done quite a bit of walking and it was super windy.

  So I only went up to the first ridge to look at the other side.

 The view back down to Akureyri and the Eyjafjorrdur fjord (the longest fjord in Iceland).

 Mt Sulur.

 On the walk back there wasn't going to be a bus any time soon so I walked the whole way back to the hotel. I found some sort of dairy product factory (possibly the reason it smells like weird cheese around here?)

Hopes are high that we will be flying tomorrow, weather looks a little better for Summit! So I'm off to bed to get a good nights sleep!