Mrs. Hoy - Flat Stanley

Welcome to Room 4, 2nd Grade at Precious Blood

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Adventures with Flat Stanley

Flat Stanley - Antarctica

Dear Ms. Hoy and class,　

My name is Bay Baskin and in October I received a Flat Stanley from your school. Over the following three months, Stanley traveled from McMurdo Station, Antarctica to the South Pole on the South Pole Traverse. The trip itself is 1,030 miles across the continent of Antarctica. Very few people in the world have ever made this trip and it’s likely that your Flat Stanley was the first to do so. Way to go Stanley!

As for a little background on the Traverse itself….The National Science Foundation directs all U.S. activities in Antarctica and is seeking a more cost effective way to deliver fuel to the South Pole. Typically, all fuel that arrives at the Pole is flown in on an LC-130 Hercules plane, 3,000 gallons at a time. Unfortunately, for every gallon delivered, a C-130 uses two gallons of fuel. Over the last 9 years, the South Pole Traverse Project has worked towards building a route to the Pole for overland delivery. This year’s was the first Traverse to actually deliver a large amount of fuel: 115,000 gallons were left at the South Pole Station. The Traverse crew included five heavy equipment operators (my job), three mechanics, one engineer and one mountaineer. The roundtrip from McMurdo to the Pole and back took 88 days.

This cd includes pictures of Stanley on the trip, as well as general pictures of Antarctica and the work we did. There’s no need to search for Stanley in each picture--he simply doesn’t appear in all of them. Rather than leave you with only pictures and to guess at their explanations, I thought it best that I include a quick description for each.

Thank you for sending Stanley along for the trip and for giving me the chance to share my unique job experience.

Sincerely,
B. Baskin


90 South	Stanley at Pole

Driver's Seat	Stanley at Pole 2

Stanley at Pole 3	Sastrugi Stanley

Pole & Station	Filling Snowmelter

Adelies	Ranger

Curtis Flat Stanley

View the PowerPoint Show of Curtis Flat Stanley's trip with Mr. Richard
(use the space bar or right-arrow key to advance the slides)

Josie Flat Stanley

Our adventure with Flat Stanley began in Joplin, MO where we headed west on old Route 66 towards Galena, KS where the Pixar folks got their inspiration for the film Cars. There is an old gas station there that was the home of an old boom truck, that was the inspiration for Tow Mater. Four women have bought the gas station and are fixing it up. There was also a fire engine that looked like the one from the movie. Flat Stanley liked seeing the old trucks and traveling on the old Route 66.

Next we headed northwest to West Mineral, KS to see Big Brutus. Big Brutus is an 1850-B Electric Shovel and is the second largest electric shovel in the world. It weighs 11 million pounds and is 16 stories tall. When operating it uses 15,000 horsepower, which is the equivalent to power used by 15,000 people. The shovel ran 24 hours a day for 11 years. Big Brutus is a symbol of the past as well as a tribute to the mining heritage of Southeast Kansas. Big Brutus did not dig coal but the huge bucket removed the overburden of dirt and rocks covering the coal seams. It ceased operations in April in 1974 because it was too expensive to operate Big Brutus. Now it is retired on the bank of a strip pit, a place of its own making.

Big Brutus was huge (as you can see from the pictures). Flat Stanley was fascinated as we toured the inside and outside of Big Brutus. We got to stand inside the bucket of Big Brutus which could move 150 tons in a single scoop. The inside of Big Brutus was huge. Surprisingly it only took 3 men to operate Big Brutus; the Operator, Oiler and Groundman. We had so much fun having Flat Stanley join us in our adventure and we definitely want to go visit Big Brutus again.