It’s a bird, it’s a plane no it’s a meteor!

After a sleepless night we headed to our next stop Meteor Crater RV Park near Flagstaff and Winslow Arizona. Todays trip was about the same number of miles 365 so a long trip but all Interstate so only 6 hours plus rest stops. More high mountain passes and wind but as we got into Arizona we started to climb to 6-7000 feet and evergreen forests dominated. Oh and Humphreys peak at 12,000 feet above sea level loomed large with its snow covered peak. We had been to Flagstaff with friend before and I remembered how beautiful it was aside from being locked out of our freezing rain covered car that we had left running to melt the snow. But that’s another story. Met a nice locksmith who said all the rental cars from Las Vegas self locked themselves and kept him very busy. When we called the rental company they said oh yeah they do that and the spare key is in the glove compartment. But I digress. Another 20 minutes and we arrived at the Meteor Crater RV Park. This park was also in the middle of a verrry wide open prairie but it had trees and was quite beautiful. After an easy check in and a free discount coupon handed out by the front desk to see the crater, we went to our site and set up for the night. Easy peasy.

The next AM we went into Winslow to see Route 66 and the corner in the Eagles song “Take it Easy” where the singer was standing when a girl in a flatbed Ford slowed down to take a look at him lol. There is some debate about where it actually happened to the lyrics writer Jackson Brown when his car broke down but Winslow has capitalized on it. I suspect the town struggled when I-40 bypassed it and made Rt66 a memory but they have capitalized on it though the town still looks a bit forlorn once out a ways from the famous corner. But it does have a Walmart where we restocked after checking out the cool corner and associated souvenir shops on opposite corners. But very cool to see it.

After a quick Walmart restock we went back to the campsite, had lunch and headed to the Crater. Turns out the crater is the largest crater and most well preserved crater from a meteor in the US. Initially around the turn of the century it was mistakenly said to be a volcanic crater by a geologist Grove Gilbert. Not unreasonable since it was surrounded by many old volcanos (Mt Humphrey for example). But Daniel Barringer a mining engineer felt it was a meteor crater and filed claims to the crater and land around it . Teddy Roosevelt granted a land patent for the crater and 640 acres in 1903. Barringer thought he would make money as he had in other ventures but in this case from mining what must be a large iron meteorite buried at the bottom of the crater. He estimated the size at around 100 million tons at $125/ton. He was wrong on all accounts. Despite many many attempts at mining and drilling he never found a meteor with theories being it was so superheated from re-entry that it vaporized on impact likely born out by discoveries of fragments later found in the areas around the crater.

A couple of interesting tidbits is that two commercial airline pilots flying in a Cessna went over the crater after fueling up in Winslow and were sucked into the crater by downdrafts and crashed. I had noticed two shiny spots on the wall of the crater and asked the tour guide who relayed the story. Both men survived with one of the pilots with a vertebral fracture dragging the other pilot who was unconscious out of the plane before it exploded. They had actually circled in the crater (yes it’s that big) trying to get up airspeed but stalled the plane trying to fly out and hit the side of the crater.

The crater was also used by NASA to train astronauts for the moon landing. Despite attempts by the US Government to purchase the site it has remained in the Barringer family privately owned to this day. It was named a National Natural Landmark in 1967.

Well after a nice visit with movies, a 4D ride (who knew) to a rogue asteroid we had to blow up to prevent an earth impact and a very nice museum visit, we headed back to the campground as we were off the next day for SantaFe, NM. Oh and bottom line the crater was never a succesful Iron mine but it is definitely a tourist “gold mine”