Monday 10-7-24 Day 28

Monday 10-7-24  Day 28

 

Departed Grand Canyon camper village, Tusayan AZ 9:15 AM.

Took Hwy 64 to I40 east/Historic Route 66 to state Hwy 180.

Stopped in Flagstaff AZ for gas. Then visited the Flagstaff City library to talk to the Florida law office about corrections to real estate documents for a property we're selling, and then downloaded and printed the legal docs. 

I admired a cute Halloween witch decoration on the Information desk and the Library staff gave me a kit to make my own, mostly from a paperback book!  (H was soooo happy!)

Flagstaff looked like a really nice little town, population of approx 76,000.

 

Headed out on I40 East/Historic Route 66 to Meteor Crater.   Out in the middle of nowhere in northern Arizona.  50,000 years ago an iron-nickel meteorite hurtling at about 26,000 MPH struck the rocky plain with an force greater than 20 million tons of TNT!  

There was a 6' dummy in a space suit at the bottom of the crater as NASA had done training there for the moon landing.

The meteor is estimated to have been about 150 feet in diameter, weighing several hundred thousand tons.  The impact created a crater 750 feet deep, 4,000 feet across and a circumference of 2.4 miles.

 The meteorite almost totally disintegrated during the impact. 

This the largest piece that has been found so far

 Amazingly the crater and acreage around it has been privately owned since 1903. Daniel Barringer, a mining engineer, was interested in mining the site for iron.  He spent 26 years mining the site but never found the the iron meteorite he thought would be buried in the crater. In 1941 the Barringer family entered into a lease with Bar T Bar Ranch Co which still exists today.    

 

We toured the crater via a path along a portion of the rim.  Much scientific research goes on at the crater and many other meteor impacts sites on the planet have been identified as such based on the knowledge gained at Meteor Crater.  Apollo astronauts trained at the crater from 1964-1972.

There was a 6' dummy in a space suit at the bottom of the crater as NASA had done training there for the moon landing.

A very cool postcard signed by all three Apollo Astronauts: Aldrin, Armstrong, and Collins

 

After a coffee and ice cream break at the new Meteor Crater coffee shop...

...we continued on I40 East/Historic Route 66 to Winslow AZ.  Roadside America had a long write up of this town…..

 

“Well I’m a standing on a corner in Winslow AZ, such a fine site to see. It’s a girl, my Lord, on a flat bed Ford slowin' down to take a look at me”

 

Winslow is a nice little town that attracts several hundred thousand tourists annually to see the town featured in the classic rock Eagles anthem…In the downtown area you will find Standin on the Corner Park, features statues of a hippie with a guitar, and another of Glen Frey, a mural, the Flatbed Ford Café, and a giant Interstate 66 sign painted in the intersection.

 

Just before sunset we were back on I40 East/Historic Route 66 then onto State Hwy 180 heading to the Crystal Forest Gift Shop where we will be boondocking for several nights, right outside of Petrified Forest NP entrance.

It got very dark soon after we turned off the main roads and started about a 15 mile to the camp spot for the night. 

The road seemed just like something out of Close Encounters of the Third Kind... 

We expected every set of lights that came up behind us to go right over the top of us...

Fortunately, none did.

It was so dark by the time we arrived at Crystal Forest it was a little difficult to figure out where to drive and find a spot as there are no designated spaces when boondocking... but we managed

 

About 9 PM and trying to conserve power so Soup for Dinner – always a favorite in our house and now trailer!

 Bird calls heard today:  Yellow-rumped Warbler, Pinon Jay