You got me wrong. I'm absolutely convinced they should have stops at interesting rocks along the way, just not 2 weeks worth. I'm just calling for a balance between the travel and the grinding/analyzing. Where I want them to get to is looking down into that inner basin. From what I can see of the orbital pictures, there's some areas there that may be continually shaded and maybe there's some water ice deposits down there, maybe some areas where water has spurted out recently. Oh yeah, I'm chomping at the bit to see the wonderful panoramas from higher up the hills. Part of those millions came from my taxes too so last I looked I get a little say in this.

I figure I got at the most 40 - 50 years left of life and I happen to be an American that wants not only science for my tax dollars but to be blown away from time to time. Before either of those rovers hit the surface I was firmly convinced that not only did water exist on the surface but probably still does below the surface. I'd also give the possibility of life on that planet a better than 50/50 chance. My suspicions were confirmed early in these missions and much of what they're finding recently seems redundant to those conclusions. Yeah, there's details to work out but ultimately none of the truly compelling questions are going to be answered until future missions that can really dig down in ground, use completely different instruments and/or return samples to Earth.

Think about landing a rover in the middle of the Sahara desert. Until you drove out of the sand you'd be pretty convinced that the geography was a whole lot different than what we know about the Earth. When's the last time you saw a truly awesome rover picture in a local newspaper? You want a manned mission eventually, then think politically. The general public puts up with their tax dollars being spent when they get wowed periodically. My scientific background does get turned on by the grinding and the instruments but my adventurous side is more like our general public. They want strange, alien landscapes. They could care less if a grind makes it to 12 mm and the chlorine levels increase as you go down the crater.