Day 15 (Meteor Crater and Sedona)

Day 15
July 6, 2006
Holbrook, AZ to Sedona, AZ (141 miles)

It rained overnight! Not as hard as the past two nights in Santa Fe, however. Actually, given that it has rained each of the past four days, there has been an amazingly minimal impact on us because all of it has come at night while we were sleeping. After packing up the trailer (dry in spite of the overnight rain) we stopped by the Pow Wow Trading Post in Holbrook where Frank bought a piece of petrified wood and a chunk of turquoise.

We arranged to meet Don Stewart, our long-time friend who helped rescue our lost camera, at the I-40 exit to Meteor Crater. Don ceremoniously handed over the box that had been mailed to him by the kind workers at the Colorado Welcome Center to Frank, reuniting the lost instrument with its rightful owner. Leave it to Don to come to the middle of nowhere in the high desert bearing gifts! Thank you!

Meteor Crater is privately owned and is quite the tourist destination these days. The 6-mile-long road off I-40 is now paved. Sessy decided that she would rather sit in the car and read her book than see the crater again (she wasn’t impressed the last time she saw it 16 years ago). So, Frank, Elliot and Emily paid the admission and went inside for a first-hand look at the best-preserved crater of its kind anywhere on earth.

About 50,000 years ago, a hunk of nickel-iron 150 feet in diameter and traveling at 27,000 MPH came crashing out of the northeastern sky and hit the ground approximately 6 miles south of I-40 in eastern Arizona. It left a hole 700 feet deep and 4,000 feet across; wide enough that 20 football games could be played on its floor simultaneously, and deep enough that the Washington Monument would not stick up above ground level if it were standing inside. We took a 1-hour, 1-mile guided tour along the rim trail, which received high marks from both Elliot and Emily.

As we were leaving Meteor Crater, we once again experienced an extremely desolate highway. The fact that we were within 5 miles of a major interstate highway yet there was absolutely no sign of human presence other than the four of us seemed amazing to us. We were trying to figure out a way to capture the feeling of isolation when someone suggested that we should just stop the car right in the road and take a picture. Sessy got out of the car and leisurely walked out a few feet, took a few shots of us waving and then leisurely got back in before we drove off. No one in the world knew it happened besides us!

We then drove westward through Flagstaff before turning south toward Sedona by way of Oak Creek Canyon. As we wound our way down through Oak Creek Canyon, we could see in places evidence of the recent wild fires. The canyon remains closed to all visitors except for through travel because of the fire danger, but with the summer monsoons expected soon, the ban should be lifted in the very near future. All throughout Sedona and Oak Creek there are banners and signs thanking the fire fighters for saving the several canyon towns that were so severely threatened over the past 6 weeks.

We checked into the Bell Rock Inn. A standard hotel room seemed luxurious and large to us after two weeks of camping. The kids watched TV for the first time in 2 weeks.

About an hour later, Frank’s parents, Norm and Sylvia, arrived at the hotel. They will join us for the next two weeks as we visit the major National Parks of Arizona and Utah. Mom and Dad will stay in lodges and hotels near where we’ll be camping.

Sedona is amazing. Everywhere you look there are large, red rock canyon walls that provide a very beautiful and dramatic backdrop for the town’s buildings and homes. After dinner out at a Mexican restaurant, we went swimming in the hotel’s pool and then watched a TV movie. Tomorrow, Grand Canyon!