Road Trip: A Crater and a Canyon: Day Eight

Ah, Subway for breakfast, sounds silly, but they have a breakfast menu with coffee and omelet subs: Delicious. We continued down Meteor road to the actual park, after breaking camp. We pulled into the parking lot and purchased tickets to the main attraction: a giant hole in the ground, yay! Upon entry, we explored the museum for several minutes until the tour of the crater rim began.

"This is a difficult hike, it is almost a mile over rough terrain and at altitude" were the word of the costumed tour guide. Now when I say costumed I mean in a pseudo park ranger outfit, but decorated with an American flag on one sleeve and a Meteor Crater patch on the other. I am convinced the shirts for this "uniform" were old boy scout shirts with the BSA lettering torn off, though I can't say for sure. Uniform aside, our tour guide was quite good; he was genial and quite knowledgeable about the crater history. The hike was also quite flat over a well worn gravel path, mind you it wasn't paved which I guess could be considered rough terrain if you've never left a city. The view from the rim were spectacular, though, and I regret leaving my wide angle lens sitting on my coffee table. Once the tour was over, Margaret and I continued to wander the museum and I over heard several people wheezing about the difficult hike and how they hadn't expected it to be nearly that hard. It occurred to me, that we were at five thousand feet and ninety percent of the people here were likely horrifyingly out of shape and had just driven up from sea level; the tour guide's warnings finally made sense. Oh well, now I feel bad for giggling at the warning, well not really, tehe.


Once we had had our fill of the astronaut hall of fame and the simulator where you could destroy the earth with an asteroid, we drove the car West into Flagstaff. I needed lunch, the Xterra an oil change, Margaret some fresh socks, and the Otter: he needed the new Electric Six album. Everyone got what they wanted except the otter, so I'll have to order the album for him when we get home and we'll be able to rock out to "Randy's Hot Tonight" and "Rip It."

Once our errands were finished, we headed to the park. The trip there was uneventful, until we reached the entrance. There was a line, stretching long, and cars were slowly trickling though. Then I saw the sign, "Lane 1: Pass Holders Only" There was no line; I pulled up passed my park pass and licence to Margaret and she passed them to the park ranger in the booth. We were handed a map, newsletter about the park, and my cards and wished a great day; we were through, across the red carpet; we were VIPs.

We sped to Mather Point, to do the obligatory stare into the pit and say "wow, that's a big hole." After the initial excitement, we set up camp in Mather Campground. This time the tent was set up for full cold conditions (it never did get as cold as that first night outside Raton, but we were prepared). We then had the expensive dinner at the cafeteria next to the general store. I must say, my pot pie was quite good. Post dinner, we rushed to catch a bus to the rim to catch sunset. I suppose it was mediocre as Grand Canyon Sunsets go, but it was still quite wonderful (I really wanted to make it to Hopi Point, or Hermit's rest, but we just didn't have time). The clouds lit up with a dull orange glow, similar to the glowing coals of a campfire. The various canyons in the Grand Canyon lit up in blues and reds. Then the wind picked up, it was chilly.

Due to the cold, we caught a shuttle bus back to Market Plaza, where we picked up a bundle of firewood from the general store. We then started to walk back to our campsite. I must say: pedestrian foot paths in the park are very poorly marked. We had forgotten our headlamps when we rushed to dinner, and were pretty much lost wandering around looking for something familiar. The roads are well marked, and if we had used those instead of the shorter more direct foot paths, life would have been easier. We ended up meeting with a couple heading to a campsite in the same campground as ours; they had a flashlight. This made life less painful.

Once we were at the site, I proceeded to start our first campfire of the entire trip. The small bundle of pine logs lasted about 1.5 hours before it started to run out and we went to bed due to the cold. This was another night that I was thankful for the Kmart blanket.