After the wild man-made environments, it was back on the interstate to discover some natural landscapes - as usual, on a completely different scale. Meteor crater (Wikipedia entry) had an impact (ha ha, no pun intended) on me since I saw the John Carpenter movie Starman when I was 13. Morag and I watched it last night, to refresh our memory - if you haven't seen it, check it out. It's kind of like the story of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, if E.T. was played by 'The Dude' from The Big Lebowski.
So, meteor crater (website) itself is 1200m in diameter, about 170m deep, and 10 football fields can be played at once at the bottom! Created about 50,000 years ago from a meteorite about 50 meters wide, traveling at several kilometers per second, hitting the earth with the force of about 10 megatons, vaporising on impact. It is the best preserved meteorite crater that exists. There is a cardboard cutout of a spaceman at the bottom (just visible with a telescope), which is a reminder that the Apollo team tested spacesuits there before going to the moon - a good job, too - as one tore a hole on a rock, and the spacesuits were reinforced afterwards.
In the years since it was discovered, the Barringer family have lived and displayed the crater. We walked around the rim to where their house was (it is usually extre mely windy, and they couldn't keep a roof on the house!). This was at the edge too, a dug out fridge belonging to one of the many who worked there. Check out the crunchy peanut butter!
The old Indian trading post (now a gas station) where the alien (Jeff Bridges) asks for some Dutch Apple Pie (he's given some home-made Berry Cobbler instead) and then the guy from SETI lets him go... I asked for some Dutch Apple Pie, as I was looking forward to it since yesterday, but they had none - I got some microwaved soup instead (what a let down). They had the wrong scene from the movie inside, also.
I walked to the bottom, looking good... no alien mothership here to pick me up :o(
Morag didn't do so well - oh dear, she's about to faint. In case you couldn't tell, these were taken in the visitor centre.
From Flagstaff, we put the pedal to the metal and headed north to our helicopter trip over the Grand Canyon. We got a great deal, but were the last to travel out (we wanted to get dramatic shadows on the canyon). One by one the helicopters left, and we stayed in the terminal - eventually one pilot was strong-armed enough to work late, and we luckily got up on the last flight of the day...
Having traveled in many different modes of transport in his life, Ian looks in supreme command of the situation. If you look real close, you can see the nervous fear in his eyes...
The Grand Canyon really is quite grand. It's a lot larger in person. I found it to be like a Mandelbrot fractal - the closer you look, the more detail you see. Some of the very moving music piped through our headphones was: Fly Me to The Moon by Frank Sinatra, Bittersweet Symphony by Verve, and (I believe) The Mission. If you play these while looking at the photos, you can get some idea of the heady emotions going through the cabin.
I took (literally) hundreds of photos of the Grand Canyon, and almost every one looks amazing.
It may seem like we are far away having lots of fun on our journey (and we are!), but every day (in different ways) we are reminded of you all. This was especially true, flying high over this majestic chasm - seeing one of nature's beautiful wonders fills us with a sense of the mystery of human experience. Hard to explain, but I hope you understand what I am trying to say...
Morag and I both survived (and indeed, were magnified by) our recent experience. Feeling very sensitive - but extremely happy, we both drove back to Williams mostly in silence - anticipating our viewing of the Grand Canyon again at sunrise tomorrow (this time from the South Rim), and meditating on our grand flight above the rift, each alone with our thoughts...
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