100 and Done! (Countries that is...)

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We are back! This last trip brought the total countries visited to 100! It is a crazy milestone. It is difficult, time-consuming and can be (IS) expensive. After I got back from Antarctica in 2007, I started thinking about it. After 2010 I was thinking about it more (as I moved from NY to Georgia) and in 2014 it had become a real goal. Between Angie and I we have been to 109 Countries. We are tied at 100 countries each. We have 9 countries different in our lists. For example, I have been to San Marino. She has not. She has been to Israel. I have not, yet. There has been some fun competition in this area. That's why we had to establish rules. 1.) Must be listed (as a country) with the US State Department 2.) Being in an airport doesn't count. You have to get through immigration somehow and not in a DMZ or a no-mans-land 3.) A passport stamp is not required. I have been to Canada, Paraguay, and Uruguay without getting my passport stamped. There are friendly borders in many places...
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Its Tuesday Morning here. I was up top of Crater Hill a couple of times yesterday. Crater Hill is part of T-site (kind of). It is the larget peak adjacent to McMurdo. It is a restricted area for most because of all the transmitters and what not. It is actually quite nice. There is a crater on top as shown is the first picture. There is a nice little pond that is frozen solid. I suspect it is deeper than 10 feet. The ground is difficult to walk on. it is very irregular. Some of it gives and some of it doesn't.

The second picture shows what is left behind from the Ice Runway. Early in the Season the Ice Runway (which is on sea ice very close to town) handles all the air traffic. Once the sea ice starts getting a little soft they move primary flights operations to Williams Airfied (willy) some miles from town on the ice shelf. There is also another ice runway on more solid sea ice called Pegasus which gets the C-17 flights from Christchurch.

Mt. Erebus is the active volcano near McMurdo. Some days there is a little steam and some days there is a considerably more. It burps out bombs and ash fairly regularly.

The last shot was taken with a level camera out the window of the Pisten Bully. The hill up Crater hill so so steep you cannot get up it with a wheeled vehicle or a matt track. Only a pisten buly or a dozer can make it. The lines in the photo are the defroster lines in the side window of the Pisten Bully. The hill is so steep if feels that teh Pisten Bully may flip over backwards on the way up.

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