Painted Desert
Meteor Crater, Petrified Forest, Painted Desert 07/02/2022
Is the name Lao-Tzu familiar with any of you? Is the Chinese proverb “The journey of a thousand miles starts begins with one step” familiar? Lao said this. We left Wetumpka on June 25 on the first step of our 4,000 mile journey. Today we turned around, 2000 miles later and started back to Alabama. We left Williams, Az and went to Winslow, Az to visit the Meteor Crater.
Over 50,000 years ago a meteorite, weighing several tons and approximately 150 feet wide, impacted in an area, outside what is now Flagstaff, Az. The impact result was devastation for miles around (approximately 7 miles) and the creation of a giant bowl shaped crater, which measured 550 feet deep and almost a mile wide. During my flying career, I had the opportunity to fly to California on several occasions. I passed over the crater just about every time I flew to the west coast, coming and going. I always wanted to see it from ground level. The crater is one of Northern Arizona’s most popular attractions. If you come this way, stop in. It will be worth your while.
After the Impact Crater, next on the list was the Petrified Forest and the Painted Desert. We entered the forest by the southern route. After visiting the forest, we took a 27 mile scenic drive north through the Painted Desert that ended at Interstate 40. It is hard to visualize, but the area you drive through was once a large, steamy swamp. This was 225 million years ago, when dinosaurs roamed the earth. The dinosaurs have since gone and the giant trees lay where they fell. Our grandchildren were some what disappointed when we were walking among the felled trees. They were expecting to see a real forest. Petrified wood can be found in every state and almost every continent. In the 1850’s the Mormon pioneers discovered this treasure trove of petrified wood scattered across the landscape and started exporting it back east. That is, until John Muir contacted Teddy Roosevelt, who then created the Petrified National Monument. A trip to this area is a fascinating high-desert experience. Next was the Painted Desert. So named for the vivid colors of soil and stone that cover the land. It is a dreamscape of pastels washed across a barren expanse of eroded hills.
We then got back on the Interstate and continued our trip toward Alabama. Next stop Albuquerque. Now it’s kids time.
In their words….
Samuel…We drove to the meteor crater and when we got there we saw a big chunk of the meteor. We went outside and saw the crater. It was huge! It looked like a great big huge hole in the ground, which it was. We went inside and watched a short movie about the meteor crater. Then we made our own craters. Once we left we went to the Petrified Forest and the Painted Desert.
Riley…Today we woke up early so we could leave to go to New Mexico. We drove to the Meteor Crater in Arizona. When we got there, there was a visitor center. We walked around inside and then back outside to see the crater. It was huge! We looked at it for a bit and we went back inside the visitor’s center. We went into a theater to watch a bit of a movie explaining what caused the crater. When it ended, we got to experiment to see how craters were made. After that we put a magnet in some dirt that had small pieces of meteorite in it. We left after that and went down to the gift shop. I ended up getting two magnets from there. We left there and drove about one more hour to go to the Petrified Forest. It was very hot there. We didn’t get anything from their gift shop. When we got outside the “trees” were all laying on their sides. It looked like there were minerals inside the trees instead of wood. Once we left there, we headed straight to Albuquerque, New Mexico. Mama and I had our own room together. Before we went to our hotel we stopped at a restaurant called The Frontier. It was a family restaurant that made Mexican food and American food. After we ate there, we went to our hotel and slept for the next day to go to Texas.
Ethan…This morning we went to see a meteor crater called Meteor Crater. It is the best preserved crater in the world. Scientists use it to decide if a hole is a crater or the effect of a volcanic eruption. The meteor crater was two miles around. Inside the visitor center we were able to make our own crater and get pieces of the actual meteor for free! Next we drove to the Petrified Forest. All of the trees had fallen into a river and turned to stone. At the end I got to stand where Albert Einstein once stood. From there we drove through the Painted Desert. It looked like a giant had colored the hills in pretty strips. It was caused by the ground being made of layered multicolored minerals.
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