Hi Jim,

Glad you dropped by, hope you come by more often.

I know it was a rhetorical question, since nobody can know what Spirit will find once it reaches the hills. My take on it is thoroughly unscientific, anthropomorphic of "the little guys", emotional, and perhaps downright mystical (and maybe Squyres was thinking along these lines too). Oppy's gotten most of the glory during the first part of the missions, and so maybe Spirit's storing up some karma for later. Hills occupy a place in human mythology as the location of secrets and mysteries, of caves and canyons, and perhaps not without reason due to nothing more mysterious than topography. Maybe, just maybe, Spirit will find something spectacular in the Columbia Hills. Maybe "just" the geology of exposed deep layers...that's a guess, but hardly an entirely unscientific one. I can hope that Squyres is right, and that the best is yet to come.