Tim and Jody were up cooking pancakes this morning when I stumbled out of my bunk. This is a euphemistic word; it is a platform on the floor that is supposed to support a chair to sit at a desk and give someone an extra step up to getting to the actual bunk, which is about shoulder high. I sleep on this platform with my head under the desk. The actual bunk Robert Zubrin once described as being the size of two park benches, and that's about right. My sleeping place is only slightly wider than a park bench.

So I sat down to apple pancakes and mixed fruit and talked over our plans for the day. The incoming crew began to gather outside around 9:00, but we weren't to meet them officially till afternoon. We all began to feel protective about this place, we realized, and were bristling a little at the invasion.

However, David went out to greet them and spent some time talking with Frank Schubert about the Hab systems and repairs and maintenance. Frank came upstairs and looked around at some of the "fixes" we have done, even looking under the kitchen sink. We peeked out the Hab windows to follow their activities, and finally turned back to our own priorities, which included "Straighten Hab," "Clean," "Pack," and "Scare new crew." To this end we hung a picture of the Space Weasel attack of yesterday.

I worked this morning for a while on yesterday's journal-I have been running behind ever since the Discovery Channel crew was here. It was a fun day to write about, but I needed to find a way to wind it up. Finally finished, I quickly pasted the document into the proper format and e-mailed it to Mission Support. Whew! One job out of the way. While I typed, Jody worked on the kitchen, to spiff it up for our visitors. We looked once again at the somewhat dubious floor, and David decided to pull out the shop vac and deal with the debris that had been collecting. So the dddrrrrrpppppppp, dddrrrrrrrppppp of the water pump was joined by the whine and wwwwwwwwrrrrrrrrr of the vacuum. The floor now looks great (considering). Earlier, Derek had disposed of the trash and compost, and Derek had hooked Kim up to his motion assessment monitors.

By this time it was lunch, which turned out to be an interesting conglomeration of items. We had refried beans, corn tortillas, wheat crackers, peanut butter, jalapeno cheese spread from our MRE collection, bananas, and homemade lemonade. Anything to clean out the larder and use up leftovers!

After lunch, David and I took a brief EVA off to some outcrops towards the north-again, on the terraformed planet. We climbed pretty high and looked back the way we had come. Our perch offered us a wonderful view across the plain all the way back to the Hab and off to the snow-covered Henry Mountains beyond. But soon it was time to slip and slide our way back down the desiccated mud slopes-we had a 2:00 meeting with Crew 16 to begin the orientation to the delights of Hab living. They were finishing up Jim's Rover orientation when we arrived back at the station.

Crew 16 has six members who will be living in the Hab, but their experience will differ a lot from ours. They told us that a number of other members will be living in Hanksville for the rotation, and the crew will not be in sim in the way we have been, in that they plan to have their suppers in town. But the folks who will be staying here were very much interested in what we had to show them about the plumbing, the water pumping, the kitchen, the trash procedures, the EVA suits, the radios, and the ATVs. They asked a lot of questions and seemed quite personable.

Jody enjoyed talking with the two geologists on the new crew, Abby and Brent, who seem very excited to be here. The crew stayed a couple of hours or so, and when they all left, we agreed that we liked them and that they would take good care of the station (as I said, we feel possessive about the place). As they left, I felt as if we had done our best to set them up for a happy and comfortable stay at the Hab.

When we had the place to ourselves again, Tim looked at me with a grin on his face and said that he and Derek were going to take the ATVs out for one last ride, to make sure that they were functioning correctly. I understood him perfectly and stood at the southeast Hab window to watch them careen out of sight. Jody got wind of the plan and took off after them. It was a very dusty afternoon, though, so Derek came back a bit earlier than the other two. When Jody and Tim returned, they looked as if they had been rolling around in the dirt, the blowing dust had covered them to such an extent.

While they were gone, David had done a walkabout for Kim (she had to stay in the Hab today because of Derek's monitors) to test the range of some of her equipment. He radioed in the information to her while I worked on my daily log.

When the guys came back, they cleaned up a bit, and then we all-including Jim from Michigan--loaded up into the blue truck and headed off to town. This was to be a celebratory dinner, and besides there was very little left in the Hab to make a nice meal out of, unless we wanted MREs, which we didn't. We went to Duke's Red Rock Restaurant for supper; the Dutch oven potatoes were quite nice, and the salad bar was a welcome addition to our diet. After we had given our orders, here walked in Crew 16 to have their dinner. We traded greetings and then got down to the business at hand. In the conversation that ensued, the gang discovered that Derek has a real affinity for country-western music, songs like "Achy Breaky Heart." Even after two weeks together, we are still making discoveries!

It was a stuffed Crew 15 who lumbered out of the Red Rock, but we weren't ready to call it a night yet. Jody suggested, and the crew concurred, that some ice cream was in order, so off to Stan's Burger Shak we went, on foot this time. While we waited for our orders to be filled, who should walk in but Frank Schubert. He regaled us with stories from the construction of the Hab and filled us in on upcoming projects. We learned about the new stations coming on line soon in Iceland and in Australia. Jody and I looked at each other: we've never been to Iceland or Australia.

During the conversation, Frank also told us about some music he recorded here at the Hab; the Extremophiles CD is coming out soon, and the profits will go to the Mars Society. We were well entertained, informed, and stuffed when we finally departed Hanksville. Again we all piled into the blue truck to return to the Hab. There were screams from the back seat as we bumped and bounced our way down Cow Dung Road, threats of carsickness, and howls of pain as Jody steered the truck through the Rock Garden and beyond.

Once back at the Hab, Jim disappeared into the Rover to work on his projects; I sat down again at my laptop; Jody checked e-mail at the HabCom; Tim and Derek ran up to the Observatory to look for interesting views; Kim downloaded some important information that we had been talking about (OK, OK-it was a recording of "Achy Breaky Heart"); David wrote his reports.

But again an excited call from the Observatory tore Kim away from her work: "Kim, we've got Saturn!" Off she went, with David right behind her. Jody and I waited our turn, and before long we heard, "April, come on up here!" When I got to the airlock, I met Derek and David coming back.

Once up to the Observatory, I was welcomed by the Ims, who graciously offered me a view of the planet. I peered through the eyepiece. Saturn looked just a bit like a very small CBS eye logo-a thick ring surrounded a fat dot. It was far brighter than Jupiter had been last night. Again, I felt the excitement in the tiny room. Jody joined us soon after, and I was able to show him what Kim and Tim had shown me.

Soon we headed back down the hill to settle down for the night. This means, of course, that we all sat at computers and did work while inevitably distracting one another and getting one another tickled. Jody reported to us on Tony Muscatello's e-mails while we other folks clicked away at our computers. Derek worked a lot on photos he had been collecting from all of us-he plans to make a CD master to preserve our memories. Most folks wound up their work around 10:30 in the evening, and then we radioed Jim to come join us for a movie. We were all wound up on our last night here-except David, who bailed on us and headed to bed.

I continued to write, however, as this would be my last journal entry for this rotation. It's going to be hard to leave this place, and I almost feel as though if I don't finish my journal, we won't have to go.

We've felt for the past few days as if we have to look really hard, listen very carefully, absorb what we can to take Mars away with us back to Earth. We have a greater appreciation for the dust, for the air, for the wind, for the cold feel of the Hab's metal floor. I cannot imagine what the Apollo astronauts must have felt when they looked out at the retreating moon.

A mission must by definition have a conclusion, and without conclusions, there can be no beginnings. I cannot come back to Mars if I don't leave. This experience of living and working in sim has made us feel like pioneers of a sort. We aren't doing groundbreaking research, nor have we truly gone anywhere, but we feel a sort of spiritual kinship with those who have.