My Dearest Anais,

Research vessel Atlantis at dock in Astoria, Oregon.

I was very happy to see you off to your new school yesterday and to know that you are happy there. Of course, to leave you and Mama again, after we had been apart so long, is no fun. But after working so hard and so long on this project, to actually leave to go to sea is a relief. Yesterday I found myself in Astoria, which is a pretty little town near the mouth of the Columbia river in Oregon. I suspect, however, that it contains more boats than people. The Atlantis is here, and if you look at the photo of her you will see a ship with a bright blue hull and superstructure of a green--a certain shade of green that defies description I should add. This is not to say that the ship is not pretty--no, in fact she is quite pretty (assuming you don't mind green) and rests proudly at her dockside spot, where I arrived just in time to watch a zillion eggs being loaded. Besides finding my cabin, which I share with a fellow named Neil--he has the lower bunk and I have the upper one--the only useful thing I managed to do was to figure out how to use a gadget called a digital camera. Someone in the Museum was foolish enough to give me this with the expectation that I will be able to use it to send photographs back to the web site. Mama will be very surprised to learn that I have actually learned how to use this camera, but you must tell her that this does not mean that I will learn to use our video camera.

Accompanying us on the cruise are three people--Susan, Mark and Andrew are their names--who are planning to make a TV program. They have been running around the ship all day following people with a huge camera and this long pole with a furry thing (its actually a microphone) on the end, which is a bit comical. Perhaps even more comical was their attempt at interviewing your father and trying to get him to say something intelligent.

Love, Papa