A huge hole, rocks and stars

From the town of Williams at an elevation of 6,800 feet (on Route 66), as well as visiting the Grand Canyon, we had a day trip to the Meteor crater, just out of Winslow. It was formed 50,000 years ago when a meteor 150 foot in diameter travelling at 26,000 mph crashed into the earth. The crater is over 1 mile across, 3 miles in circumference and 550 feet deep. It remains the world’s best preserved example of an impact crater, probably as it’s relatively young in geological terms. It was also used in the 1984 movie Starman.

In the afternoon and evening, we visited the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff. The Clark telescope was built in 1896 and is renowned for mapping the surface of the moon for the landing in 1969. It closed in December for repair, but we still got to see it and listen to the history behind it.

In addition, we saw the Pluto telescope that discovered the planet (which was then downgraded to a dwarf planet in 2006). In the evening, a number of mobile telescopes were set up and we got to see Jupiter and the surface of the moon. To be honest, the telescope we had in Australia showed the same amount of detail. We also saw the Andromeda galaxy and Crab Nebula as large blobs. What was great, was being able to see the Orion Nebula through the 16” telescope. It was in much more detail than we could make out in Australia, but then with such a large telescope, it should have been!

We than headed south to Sedona and dropped 3,000 feet. We had lots of sunshine during the day even though it was still below freezing at night. The scenery around the town was amazing:

The Chapel of the Holy Cross is built into the rocks

And we met a local J

We’re now down at the RV dealers in Mesa outside Phoenix. The change in the landscape was also visible as we dropped another 2,000 feet and back into the warmer weather.

From here, it's down to Tucson for a week, and still warmer weather :-)