Heading home---and a big hole in the ground

We left out of Lake Havasu yesterday morning and headed east on what is the last leg of this trip. On the way out Joanne mentioned that she'd someday like to stop to see the Meteor Crater out in the Arizona desert. Well, that someday was yesterday. Somewhere between Flagstaff and Winslow is a huge hole in the ground that was formed my a meteor crashing into the earth some 50,000 years ago. Since our goal for the day was to reach Gallup, New Mexico, we figured we had plenty of time to stop. The crater is located about six miles south of I-40.

This property is owned by the Barringer Family, the off springs of the scientist who originally did research on the crater in 1902. The original studies were to determine if a part or all of the meteor was buried under the crater. Subsequent studies and research has determined that the meteor vaporized on impact blowing tons of tiny rocks and particles over several miles. It is estimated that the meteor was traveling at 40,000 miles per hour upon impact.

The crater today is 4000 feet wide and 2.4 miles in circumference and it is around 550 feet to the floor. When the research was being conducted several shafts were drilled in the floor looking for remnants of the original meteor. Today that area is ringed by a fence to keep the few people allowed into the crater away. To give you an idea of how far down it is they have placed a six foot tall replica of an astronaut and a 6x8 foot U. S. flag. It is impossible to see these two items with the naked eye and can only be seen by telescope. If you click on this picture to enlarge it you may be able to see them attached to the fence. I took this picture with full 10x zoom on my camera. An interesting sidenote is that NASA used this crater for training the Astronaut's who were scheduled to walk on the moon.

If you find yourself on I-40 in the middle of the Arizona desert, somewhere between Flagstaff and Winslow and have a little extra time on your hands, you definitely should take the six mile drive to the Meteor Crater. The route in is a good blacktop road and they have plenty of parking for the big rigs. We spent about an hour and a half and that included viewing the crater, climbing to all three observations platforms, viewing the film in their theater and the necessary visit to their gift shop.

After leaving the crater we again headed east and reached Gallup around 6:00pm. (Actually it was 7:00pm local time since we had not changed our clocks after leaving Arizona.) We spent the night, along with several other RV's in the Wal-Mart parking lot after a good dinner at Applebee's. Today we crossed New Mexico and are now spending our last night on the road at the same place we spent the first night out on this trip, the Cactus RV Park in Teacumcari, New Mexico.