Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Meteor Crater (February 21)

Meteor Crater is about half an hour east of Flagstaff, Arizona.  Here are a couple of shots of as much of the crater as would fit in my lens.  In the middle of the crater is a mine shaft where they went looking for the meteor many years ago.  The meteor wasn't there, it got blasted up on impact, they found a few fragments around the crater though.

 

  

The east side of the crater...

  

... and the west side of the crater...

  
Crater rim...

This is the trail that goes around the crater rim.  Usually they have tours every hour or so on part of the rim trail, but it was very windy that day so this trail was closed.

 

There are several types of sandstone at the crater, here's one:

  

View from the crater rim to the north:

  

From the crater rim to the east:

  

To the north again, closer up ...

  

It was a very interesting place to visit!  I'm glad the weather cleared enough (this was my snowed-out Arizona weekend) to be able to go.  There were rain showers around the crater but luckily none while I was there.

1 comment:

  1. It reminds me of the Nevada test site. I saw quite a few of these but the ones I saw were man made using nuclear devices. A meteor or a nuclear device actually creates the same impact geology. Fascinating! I wish I could own a few rock samples from this site! ;-)

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