From Deep Craters to Painted Rocks
29 December 2024
We awake to cold. Frosty has visited overnight.
We continue east through desert. We have a full tank of gas, practically a steal at 2.79 a gallon. It is times like these that this Californian takes a travel photo of the gas prices! Breakfast, hot coffee and we are off to explore. Today, there exists an opportunity to visit some interesting sites.
Meteor Crater National Landmark
There exists a lot of tourist hype and hoopla in this region. I can pass on a lot of it. What interests me most is what happens when a very big iron rock collides with Mother Earth with a force 150 times greater than an atom bomb. Bada Bada Big Boom!
Some 50,000 years ago this event occurred between Flagstaff and Winslow, Arizona. The resulting collision created a really big hole in the earth.
This original crater was over 750 feet deep and about a mile across. Estimates describe the meteor as weighing over 300,000 tons traveling about 450 miles per second. Nothing survived the impact. Melted rocks from the blast zone scattered for miles.
This occurred during our last ice age. Forests were leveled, resident mammoths and sloths pulverized into oblivion. While it doesn’t look like it today, the forests did return, don’t know how many mammoths came back. Today, the hole has filled in to a current depth of 550 feet. The Visitor Center offers observation decks and good views.
Included in admission is the Discovery and Space Center with information explaining the event. The center also displays an Apollo 11 capsule. The crater is similar to the surface of the moon so in the 1960s, NASA astronauts used its rugged surface to train for the first moon landing.
Petrified Forest National Park
Not far east of Winslow is the exit for Petrified Forest. Want to see more rocks but this time in technicolor? This is the place to stop. Pretty amazing what time, weather and minerals can do to wood.
The Petrified Forest is a natural area where ancient trees have turned into stone through the process of fossilization. Over millions of years, minerals like quartz replaced the trees’ organic materials, creating colorful, rock-like replicas of the original wood.
After a stop at the Visitor Center, we slowly drive through the park observing features like its stunning petrified logs, unique badlands, and sweeping desert vistas. These ancient landscapes offer fossilized trees that lived over 200 million years ago.
The petroglyphs are visible from a stop along our drive. Hard to see bus one can photograph them and zoom in for detail.
We exit back onto I-40 and gallup onward and into the state of New Mexico. Choruses of Route 66 return as we pass Gallup.
Continental Divide
Zooming over 7,295’ Borrego Pass, we cross the Continental Divide, driving through the little town of Continental Divide. Here, rainfall exhibits a split-personality. To the west, water drains into the Pacific Ocean. To the east, it trickles to the Atlantic. We pass the community of Thoreau, which has nothing to do with Henry David and is pronounced “thuh-ROO.” The community is located within the Navajo Nation, the largest native American tribe in the U.S.
Grants, New Mexico
After a fine day, we roll into the small town of Grants. It’s known for its 1880s railroad camp founded by Canadian brothers Grant, Grant, and Grant. They helped build this section of the Atlantic and Pacific RR. The second boom for the area was when the Navajo shepherd and prospector Paddy Martinez, while working for George Hearst’s Anaconda Copper Mining Company, discovered uranium in the nearby mountains.
We are in the heart of what is referred to as “frozen fire.” Amazing geologic features such as lava flows, cinder cones, lava tube caves, sandstone bluffs and mesas cover the desolate landscape for miles.
Probably the best site in the region are the beautiful mesas. Like most such geologic outcroppings, mesas are formed from volcanic activity and features a flat top and slopping sides. Scrub grasses and juniper grows along its flanks.
Grants is a good stopping place for the evening. We locate our lodging, arrange for dinner, and open a bottle of wine.
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