Link to Winslow / Meteor Crater Facebook Pictures

Today we woke up and decided to explore Flagstaff a tad.  We drove to the local university – Northern Arizona University, and walked around for a little over an hour.  It was nice to get up and be active in the morning, and the cool breeze was a nice change from the heat.  The campus seemed very “green”, because they use reclaimed water for their irrigation systems, had their own energy-efficient power plant, and for other, more obvious reasons (like an abundance of recycling bins and whatnot).  It was a nice campus, and the best thing about it is that all of the maintenance men were driving old Toyota pickups!  Also, instead of having dinky little golf carts like most campuses, they had 4wd ATV’s and other cool vehicles for their campus staff.  There were nature trails which criss-crossed the main university roads, giving the students the choice to walk to class through the forest.  There were also some uniquely designed structures, like a huge dome called the Walkup Superdome (not sure what types of classes are held in there), as well as a campus observatory to view the stars.

After exploring the university, Molly and I decided to go towards Meteor Crater, which is east of Flagstaff.  We got on the interstate and I immediately noticed the gusty winds.  I was going about 80mph and getting blown all over the road.  We were in Indian country at this point – Apache Indian territory, to be exact.  We saw a bunch of official vehicles pulled off to the side of the road ahead, and then I noticed it – a raging fire in the median!  There were dozens of firefighters out there with shovels, and it looked like they were trying to make some sort of perimeter around the fire so it would burn itself out.  Crazy.  Only out west would this be a regular occurrence.  Shortly after that, Molly and I saw an exit ahead that was closed.  We saw a crane, slightly off of the exit, and I assumed that they were just doing some work to the exit.  Then we noticed that the guardrail was bent into a “C” shape, and there was an overturned semi truck, right off of the exit.  Guess those gusty winds got the best of him.  Again – only in the wild west!!

I saw signs on the interstate that said “Winslow, Arizona”, and kept remembering the lyrics to the Eagles song “Take It Easy”

“I’m standing on the corner in Winslow, Arizona – such a fine sight to see – it’s a girl, my lord, in a flatbed Ford, slowing down to take a look at me”

We decided to head to Winslow and check it out.  My dentist had mentioned that there is actually a place called “Sitting on the Corner” in Winslow, so I wanted a picture with it.  We drove about 20 miles past Meteor Crater to get to Winslow.  Driving into Winslow, you could tell that it doesn’t have much going for it.  There were run-down houses, run-down gas stations, and it looked like this town had been hit particularly hard by the economic depression.  Then, we got within about 2 blocks of downtown Winslow, and everything changed.  The town acquired an old-timey feel to it, the buildings looked restored yet old, and tourists appeared out of the woodworks, walking up and down the town center’s streets.  Molly and I became one of those statistics and took some pictures in this famous corner.  We went into a touristy shop, but didn’t buy anything.  Then we left.  We had accomplished what we had set out to do in Winslow, and I didn’t see any real reason to spend more time there.

We were in the public parking lot and pulled around the corner towards the exit.  We were passing what seemed to be a stationary box truck, when all of a sudden I see it backing up, out of the corner of my eye.  I swerved and luckily he didn’t back into me.  He would have backed into Molly, actually, because he was on her side of the car.  That wasn’t fun – especially since parking lots are considered private property and accidents that happen on them don’t go through the normal citation/insurance/reimbursement policy that happens in a regular accident.

So after narrowly avoiding a depressing end to our journey, my Civic remained in one piece, and we decided to head to Meteor Crater.  First of all, the Meteor Crater actually has its own exit off of the interstate.  When you turn off of the interstate, you can turn left, onto a nice paved road leading to Meteor Crater, or you can turn right – onto a dirt road, heading to one of Arizona’s largest cattle farms.  It’s immediately apparent that this Meteor Crater is a big business – it was $14/ea just to get in!

We spent more time in the museum than at the crater itself – there is a lot of cool science behind those space facts!  Did you know that there is a 12 mile high volcano on Mars?  Or that the moon’s craters are so huge because it doesn’t have an atmosphere, so meteors can slam into it full-force?  Or that the meteor that created meteor crater was traveling at about 11 miles / second?  Or that there was only one meteor-related injury – a lady in Alabama was in her living room when a small meteor came through her roof, bounced off her floor and hit her in the hip?  This place was full of cool and random facts like that.  There were much more, but my memory isn’t the greatest these days..

Meteor Crater is HUGE.  To put it into perspective, they have a 6-foot astronaut with an American flag in the bottom of the crater, and they have some telescopes set up so you can see him.  I took a few pictures – one zoomed all the way in, then a bit more zoomed out, then all the way zoomed out.  I’ll post them below.

After Meteor Crater, we headed to Flagstaff to walk around the city center.  Flagstaff is full of hippies.  We had no idea why until we saw this newspaper article!

We walked around for a bit and ate a crepe at the “Creperie”.  It was delicious!!  It was called the “Moss” and had fresh spinach, artichoke, mushroom, mozzarella with a fresh white cream sauce and fresh basil.

After eating that, we decided to head towards the Grand Canyon and find a campsite for the night.  We drove for a few hours to make it to the Grand Canyon Park, then left the park out of the south entrance and got some gas.  I figured it would be a bit expensive, since it was so close to the Grand Canyon, but I never imagined it would be $4.39/gallon for unleaded.  We filled up for $40..highway robbery.  Then we found a forest service road to camp on.  I woke up in the middle of the night, and my torso was frozen!!  I didn’t want to get out of the tent to get a pair of pants / thermals, so I just froze all night.  It got down to about 40 degrees last night!!