Everyone load up – we’re headed to Cape Evans.”

It’s a Sunday at McMurdo Station, Antarctica, and we’re taking a trip 25 miles away across the sea ice. The weather is perfect, clear and blue. We load up three Deltas – large, wheeled vehicles holding 18 people apiece in their cabs – with survival bags and supplies. The top of a Delta’s huge wheel is level with my eyes.

Field expeditions off-station are always exciting. I relish the break from McMurdo’s close quarters and busy dirt roads. This gateway station is crowded with those of us in “town” preparing to head to more remote Antarctic stations. Flus and colds spread quickly through overpacked bunkhouses, and the frenzy of activity can be overwhelming. Today is a chance to get out into the isolation of the Antarctic coast. I hop into the back of a Delta eagerly.

Our caravan grinds into motion across the ice, hugging the coastline of Ross Island. In minutes, I relax as the hum of generators, machinery and people melts away, leaving us with nothing more than the sound of the Deltas and our own voices. Soon our three vehicles look more like tiny specks than massive wheeled transports, dwarfed by the scenery that grows and spreads around us. We drive past giant ice chunks formed by the motion of the ice, locked-in icebergs the size of downtown Bangor.

It takes almost two hours for us to reach our destination: Cape Evans hut, the historic hut used by the explorer Robert Scott and his men in 1908, exactly one century ago. We spill out of the Deltas near the island’s shore. “There it is,” someone says, pointing to the hut’s roof. “Look, you can see the anchor from their boat.” Sure enough, there by Scott’s hut is the anchor of the boat he used to get here, sailing across the same sea we had just driven over.

This hut was a jumping-off point for the first attempts to reach the South Pole.

Stepping into the hut is an odd experience, halfway between visiting a museum and an abandoned, haunted house. Inside, everything is exactly as it was 100 years ago, right down to the London newspaper sitting on the research table next to the perfectly preserved body of a penguin they were planning to dissect. The cold has protected everything, from the paper to their food stores. I use a headlamp to navigate around the room, reading the labels on boxes of cocoa and dog biscuits.

The whispers of these men’s lives still inhabit the air. On the inside of one bunk, written on the wall with a pencil, is a small list: “Losses to date.” Four names appear, the last one “Shackleton,” with a question mark (he was not, in fact, dead – he lived until 1922).

Leaving the hut, we get back into the Deltas. The day has grown a little bit warmer and the road across the sea ice has softened. Barely 20 minutes from Cape Evans, we bog down, our giant wheels spinning in the snow. Everyone gets out. We dig out the Delta – those of us without shovels using our hands – then wedge the wheels with plywood. Cheers are raised when we get the Delta going again, in a collective burst of triumphant energy.

Good thing we had that energy, because we bogged down again and had to dig the Deltas out twice more before we were clear of the softer stretch of snow.

Halfway back to McMurdo, we stop to explore ice caves, frozen natural caverns that were recently discovered. The ice caves have formed right at the edge of the Erebus glacier – a wall of ice that moves one foot every year. We stop at the mouth of the caves, going in six people at a time. You have to slide down a tunnel to get inside. I waited impatiently for my turn.

It was incredible. As I slid down into the ice caves I looked above me at intricate walls of ice crystals, all glowing blue from the sunlight outside. At the bottom of the cavern I stood on a small, icy pond, the crystalline formations creating jagged, fragile walls all around me. It was much colder inside than out. When I finally climbed back out, emerging from the cold, blue belly of the cave, I found myself blinking against the white daylight.

We arrive back at McMurdo too late for dinner, but the galley staff has saved us plates. Tired, I tucked into my dinner blindly, then slept, dreaming of Scott’s expedition and of ice caves not yet discovered.

Meg Adams, who grew up in Holden and graduated from John Bapst Memorial High School in Bangor and Vassar College, shares her experiences with readers each Friday. For more about her adventures, go to www.bangordailynews.com or e-mail her at madams@bangordailynews.net.