We made it to Fairbanks today after a long day of travel from Chicago. While in O'Hare, I met Mark Buesing, a physics teacher from Libertyville, IL, who has an uncanny knack for recognizing strangers from their expedition page photos. He will be leaving on a NASA trek to Greenland within 48 hours of the end of orientation!! (You can learn more and follow his trip on his expedition page!)
After an uneventful flight to Anchorage, Alaska, (well, uneventful other than the guy in the back row with headphones, singing out loud without realizing that half the plane could hear him) we learned that our connecting flight to Fairbanks would be delayed by 80... 110... no, wait... 150 minutes.
It wasn't all bad, though. During the delay, we ran into Paula Dell and Alex Eilers. Both ladies are PolarTREC alums who traveled to Antarctica during the 2011 field season. We got to hear about some of their experiences working with Antarctic Ice Fish and Weddell Seals, respectively. They got me really excited! (You can learn a lot more about their projects on their completed expedition pages!)
In fact, we got so carried away talking that when we returned to our gate for the flight, the airline employees tried to tell us they had been waiting for us! Riiiight. We delayed the flight.
The trip to Fairbanks was short, but beautiful. Check out some shots from the plane as we flew over Denali National Park. The streaky windows and intruding propellors don't really do it justice, but it was truly a sight to behold, and got me very excited to learn and explore more in the polar regions.
Snow-capped mountains of Denali National Park.
Rare view of Denali without cloud cover.
Do you notice how dark blue the sky is, even in the middle of the day?