Confessions of an RVer: METEOR CRATER

Mr. W read about Meteor Crater and routed us to make a stop by to see it on our way. There is an RV park also named Meteor Crater. They are some how tied together. The RV park gives you a coupon to get $2 off the admission price and once you get to the crater, there are advertisements for the RV park. The RV park is close to the crater. It has gravel, flat, pull-thru sites. It was $30 with a Good Sam discount. It isn't a park that I would stay at for more than a day or two. It was great for an overnight stay. It was a little more than we like to spend nightly but there is nothing else close.

It is believed that 50,000 years ago a meteorite came hurtling at about 26,000 miles per hour into our atmosphere and it was on a direct collision course with Earth. It was a huge iron-nickel meteorite, estimated to have been about 150 feet across and weighing several hundred thousand tons and it struck the ground with an explosive force greater than 20 million tons of TNT. In a matter of seconds, a crater of 700 feet deep and over 4000 feet across was carved into the plain.

Prior to impact, less than a percent was lost due to atmospheric heating and ablation as it plummeted to Earth. During impact, however, it is believed that a small percentage was vaporized, whereas the majority was melted. Any meteorite material that did not vaporize or melt was intensely fragmented and either thrown out during excavation or mixed with the fragmented rock that remained in the crater.

To give you a better idea as to the crater's size, imagine 200 football games being played simultaneously on its floor, while more than two million spectators observe from its sloping sides.

From 1964 through 1972, the U. S. Geological Survey and NASA provided extensive science training at Meteor Crater for the Apollo astronauts. This training was particularly significant because scientists were extremely interested in what materials lay on the lunar surface as well as what was beneath the surface. Astronauts still train there today. Meteor Crater has sustained relatively little removal of material since it's formation 50,000 years ago. The crater walls have only been slightly modified by erosion and, in places, still exhibit some of the original fallout from the debris cloud. Most of the craters on Earth have been leveled by erosion. Although there are many larger terrestrial impact sites, Meteor Crater is the first proven and best preserved impact site on Earth.

The center has a short film that is very informative and some great displays. The cost for seniors is $14 pp. It was pretty informative and some place that I'm glad I visited.