A hole in the ground, it's big and sort of round!

I'm way behind with our blog, again! We left Colorado over a week ago and moved to Holbrook, Arizona, where it was hot!

While we were there we visited Meteor Crater which is 6 miles from exit 233 on I40. The drive to the crater is through the open range of the high desert.

Meteor Crater was formed when a huge meteorite weighing about 1,400 pounds crashed into northern Arizona 50,000 years ago, creating a crater 700ft deep, 4,000 ft across and 2½ miles round.

For many years meteor crater was thought to have been caused by volcanic activity.

Part of the original meteorite.

Early in the 20th century a mining engineer, Daniel Barringer, from Philadelphia obtained mining leases for a 2 square mile radius including the crater. He was convinced that the great mass of the meteorite was buried in the crater floor. Although he spent 20 plus years drilling he was didn't find a thing, but as scientists now know the meteorite mostly vapourised before it hit the ground he was definitely out of luck.

Until the early 1970’s NASA sent Apollo astronauts for training at Meteor Crater because of certain similarities to the lunar landscape.

We did wonder exactly what there was to see and say about what is basically a hole in the ground, but it was very interesting and we spent a good couple of hours there.

Have fun, we are!