Meteor Crater, Arizona

It was a VERY windy day today. But the weather forecast said it wasn't going to get any better in the next few days, so we went to visit Meteor Crater anyway. The crater itself is five miles up a nice paved road from the RV park (which is owned by the same company). This is the building complex at the end of the road. It contains a gift shop, a museum and a theatre showing a short movie called "Collisions and Impacts" which "allows visitors to experience the thunderous sound and explosive fury of the meteor's burning trip through the Earth's atmosphere and ground-shaking collision with Earth in Northern Arizona."

Between the wind and the altitude (5604 feet), it was necessary to take some breaks --

The crater is immense. They say you could play 20 football games at the same time on the bottom --

It's nearly a mile across and more than 550 feet deep (the top of the Washington Monument sitting on the bottom would be at eye level with the Visitor Center) --

The remains of shafts drilled to try to find the meteorite (which they later realized had vaporized) in the 1920s can be seen at the bottom --


This is a fragment of the meteorite which broke off and was found two miles away. Forry had his picture taken with it more than sixty years ago when he visited here with his parents as just a little boy. We'll have to look through the storage unit to see if we can find that picture when we get back to the ranch...

I was feeling pretty proud of myself after I climbed to the top of the highest observation post -- just two weeks before my seventieth birthday! (The wind really bothered Forry's ears, so he didn't go all the way up.) I understood why they had handrails all along the trail -- when the wind gusted, you really wanted to hang on! (The forecast this morning predicted gusts up to 40 miles an hour...) You are not allowed to go to the bottom of the crater and the walking tours around a portion of the rim were cancelled today due to the wind.