Day 57: A huge hole and a giant crack in Arizona!

October 23, 2007:

Today we back-tracked a few miles to Meteor Crater... a huge hole created by a meteor that weighed an estimated 150 tons and slammed into the earth at over 26,000 miles per hour...

Deb and I am standing on the north rim here with a small part of the east rim in the background...

This is most of the crater... If the Washington Monument were standing in the bottom of the crater, we would be eye-to-eye with the top... look closely at the bottom and you will see a square area witha fence around it...

This is the same area through my 300mm lens... if you look real close at the bottom right corner of the fence, you will see a 3x5 American flag and a six-foot tall astronaut...

This was taken about 3 miles away looking back at the west side of the rim...

After eating lunch at the crater, we drove to Grand Canyon National Park...

My goal was to get to the South Rim late in the afternoon when the sun is going down and the rich evening light causes the canyon to come alive... Deb posed for this photo when we first got there...

and then moved comfortably well back from the edge to wait and watch for the sunset...

The lighting difference is...

day...

and night...

This photo was taken after dark as the moon was coming up over the canyon in the east...

after 100's of shots (I stayed well after dark) and too many to put up on the blog right now, we headed for St. George, Utah...

After a long, dark, and somewhat hazardous trip out of the canyon (many deer along road and we almost ran out of gas), we crossed the border about 0100 and got to our motel at around 0130 for a much needed rest.