Meteor Crater

Since Tuesday we have been visiting in Chandler (Jill's house). The girls' last day of school was Wednesday and we were invited to attend the Jingle Jog party at 1pm at the school. Dave went to the function while I stayed back and helped make dinner for later in the day. We made arrangements to pick up our son-in-law's parents Friday morning and the four of us would drive to Winslow to see the Meteor Crater. We had been to this in 1986 and we remember that all that was there was the crater and walking trails around the rim. No explanation, no buildings, no nothing. This facility and it's educational components has been run privately by one family for over 100 years and it was amazing as to what they have done - very informative, lots of hands-on exhibits, and well designed. We had a back-up plan if we couldn't get to Winslow since blizzards had been in the area since Monday and there was a winter driving cautionary for yesterday. Back up plan? Of course - a casino. There are 9 in the Phoenix to Flagstaff corridor so what ever the day would bring, we would still have fun.

We got on the road about 10 and drove up into Flagstaff where there was plenty of snow and the temp had dropped to about 34. The roads were clear even though we could tell that within hours of us coming into Flagstaff, there was fresh snow on the ground about 3 inches deep, so we kept on going and got to the site about 1:30pm. About 50,000 years ago an iron-nickel meteorite, estimated at 150 feet in diameter and weighing several thousand tons, crashed into the plains near Winslow and with the impact, the immense shock waves sent out over several miles, pulverizing and vaporizing anything in it's path. A giant bowl shaped cavity was formed, 700 feet deep and over 4000 feet wide. There have been many meteorites that have crashed into earth but this site is the best preserved and first proven meteorite impact on Earth. Very impressive. This terrain so closely resembles the moon and other planets that NASA used this site as it's officially Apollo training for the astronauts. On our ride back home (south) it was fun to watch the temp gauge in the car steadily climb back up to a balmy 54 by the time we got back to Phoenix by 7:15pm.