This morning I couldn't help but wake up early. Normally I awaken at 7:30 am for a quick breakfast and then get our morning meeting started at 8:00. But today I was going out on EVA! And I was up before 7:00.

I had been holding back joining any of the previous 5 EVA's this crew had supported. First, none of my research is dependent on me going outside on EVA. I am not a field biologist or geologist. In fact, my work is better served staying inside. And second, I wanted to give everyone who came here their fill of the wonderful experience of being in a spacesuit out on a Martian landscape with two other astronauts working beside them.

I also could not help but have in the back of my mind, from when I was a kid, all the times I watched incredulously as Kirk went on yet another away mission and put himself in mortal jeopardy on almost any given episode of Star Trek. Sure they were fun and allowed him the opportunity to seduce yet another strong-willed, yet eager-to-be-tamed alien female. But any real space mission and thus any realistic Mars mission simulation would not put the commander outdoors on a regular basis, if at all.

But today Dave Scott needed a break and so I put my misgivings aside. He had been on EVA almost constantly and wanted to tend to other tasks today. So I decided it was finally my turn and joined an EVA with Joan and Simone.

I decided to use the opportunity to deploy two dust collectors for my dust contamination study, just to see what the ambient dust looks like that falls out of the MDRS sky over a 24 hour period. Once that was completed, we planned to head northeast of the Habitat on ATV in search of Red Canyon.

Getting on the ATV and heading out in a spacesuit was as fun as I remembered it from FMARS, if not more so. The landscape is barren and breathtaking at the same time and has a much redder tint to it than Devon Island. And when the only other two people around you are dressed in spacesuits and talking to you through radios, believing you are on Mars is not that much of a stretch.

As we rolled north in the late morning and gazed at the plateaus, ridges and canyons of this Martian analog, I realized I had not been outside since Monday at Noon. It felt good to be in the saddle again. It hadn't really bothered me before but driving past all of the great scenery was a reminder of what I had been missing.

Such thoughts left my mind relatively quickly, however, about 3 km north of the Hab, when we started to get close to entering a canyon that feeds into Red Canyon. Navigation was required. The difference between the right path and the wrong path for an ATV EVA can be hard to gauge. We had to get off our vehicles a couple of times and walk some distance ahead or climb to higher ground to make sure we were making wise choices. It seems no matter the level of detail a map provides - nature can still surprise you.

Eventually we found a wonderful line to follow that took us past towering mesas and layered, wind-sculpted canyon walls. It turned out to be a great day on Mars! I was certain we would be able to make it to our ultimate goal, right to the middle of Red Canyon, before the reference mission safety factor required that we turn around and head home.

Then, with less than a kilometer to go, we started running into vegetation - very un-Mars like. And as we motored a bit closer, we saw that Muddy Creek actually still had quite a bit of water in it, too much to cross. So we had to be satisfied with stopping on Red Canyon's front porch. The view of the red-tinted rock walls was worth the trip. Red Canyon is aptly named.

Unfortunately we could only spend a few minutes gazing at the panorama before our simulation rules required that we head back. We needed to have enough suit consumables remaining to make it back even with an ATV failure. We were already pushing that limit. So Simone took a sample. Joan took some photographs to document the sight and we headed back into the narrow canyon that had brought us there.

The trip back home was very relaxing and uneventful. Once you blaze a good path, returning back on it is a treat. We made very good time.

And then 3 hours and 41 minutes after we left it, we were back in the airlock, tired, hungry and wet with sweat. The thermometer in my suit read 91 degrees Fahrenheit. So why were we smiling? You have to be an analog Martian to understand.