Day 6 Meteor Crater and Petrified Forest

January 28, 2023

The campground was quite lovely. Starkly beautiful, and only a few campers. An Airstream, a car which I am assuming they slept in as there wasn't a tent or camper near, an old old truck camper hauling a jeep and dirt bike, and a really, really, really big one that people tend to live in or travel for long periods of time in. The sun was rising in our rear view as we headed to Meteor Crater for our 8 o’clock entry and rim tour.

Meteor Crater is quite interesting. Over 50,000 years ago a meteor crashed here and spread rocks and meteorites in every direction for over 100 miles. Back in the day everyone including scientists thought it was a volcanic crater but a mining engineer determined it to be from a meteor. It is now owned by descendants of the Baringer family and also a local rancher who owns the property surrounding it. We didn’t get to hike the rim because of the snow and ice but did have a very informative interpreter and movie and we could go outside to the observation platforms. It is a mile across! And 550 feet deep right now. Erosion has been filling it in for its 50,000 years. Apparently it is the best-preserved crater in the world and has been used for NASA training and is still used for research.. They did a nice job of making it a tourist attraction with a museum, gift shops, and even cafe. There were quite a few employees considering it is the winter season, and we weren’t the only ones there. The guide said before CoVoid the tour groups would have 100 people in them and it was shoulder to shoulder people everywhere, and it is slowly building back up to prior crowds.

Our next destination for the day was the Petrified Forest. We hopped out of our truck to get a picture with the NP sign and another group hopped out of their vehicle too. They were from West Virginia and had flown in to catch the Arizona national parks while their kids were on winter break.

Millions of years ago when we were one land mass this area was forested and very wet! The trees fell and petrified and are now the most amazing stones in Arizona. The colors vary and it is like another world. There are LONG trees that looked like someone sawed them into pieces but that is how they fractured over time. The park is a drive-through park but you stop and hike or stop and gawk or stop and take tons of pictures. We did all of those. We got in over 10 miles of hiking but they were split up over the course of the day. The landscape varied throughout our drive, tons of petrified wood, the “painted desert” where the different minerals striped the hills, and petroglyphs of the natives that had called this beautiful area home thousands of years ago. The infamous Route 66 ran right through the park and there is an old car to commemorate that. The telephone poles that once stood proudly alongside the road remain, no lines though, just the poles.

We headed back to Holbrook for the night. Andrew booked a wigwam for the night. This campground (of which there were several) is listed on the national register of historic places. There are also old cars parked at the wigwams and “tow-mater”. :)