Our final day on Mars was an unusual one in that no new crew is coming in and we are responsible for "summerizing" the place. After a late night in the observatory I didn't get up as early as I planned, but then again I never do.

We all went about our various cleaning tasks (mine was the upstairs floor of the Hab, primarily the kitchen). The kitchen was pretty time consuming as we had to weed out all the stuff that would go bad or could be accessed by the mice, which is most of it. We ended up with five-plus huge garbage bags of food. It's pretty interesting seeing what kind of people have lived here based on the shopping. There have been some Asians, a super health nut, and a legume lover. Not to mention someone with a serious powdered milk addiction. It's an economical and feasible idea for a Mars mission, but I'd rather drink water for two weeks straight than touch that stuff. Apparently everyone else agreed as there are about six Sam's Club sized boxes left. Same goes for the MREs; who eats those when they don't absolutely have to? Yuck.

Around five we finally got ourselves together and decided to take our final field trip to Goblin Valley State Park. We threw all the food in the van and crammed ourselves in. This is harder than it sounds as the only operational door is the front passenger's side. We drove 45 minutes, paid $6, and parked at the overlook. We got out and looked for about 3 minutes before everyone started walking back to the van. I yelled at them a bit and started hiking away. Maybe I'm just a low-down Colorado-bred hippie who's lived in Boulder for five years, but when I go to a national or state park, especially a nature-oriented one, I have to go out and walk around!!! Chip agreed to an hour, Marcus got in the car and passed out, I went off on my own vigorous little tour, and everyone else putzed about the park. Apparently this is the place where they filmed part of GalaxyQuest; I think it resembled a grown-up sized sandstone playground. I crawled in some alcoves, hiked about, played with the agate (and perhaps jasper), and vowed to Save the Planet because places like that should stick around unchanged. It really is quite nice outside (yes, out in nature) when you tear yourself away from technology and life long enough to go check it out.

It got dark and we drove back to Hanksville. We donated the food to Don and went to grab some tasty chow at the local steakhouse. Since getting back to the Hab, we have been cleaning like madmen (just like when we got here) and loading a bunch of stuff in the truck to take to Denver. It's been a great rotation, but I think we're all about ready to leave this tin can and see our various and assorted loved ones.