A big hole in the ground and ancient ruins.

I am going to preface this post with the suggestion that if you have access to a large monitor this post will be a lot more enjoyable to read.  My 22.5" monitor makes the photos far more entertaining than my 15" laptop.  You can double-click on any picture and view it full screen.

It is a warm morning here in the Arizona desert.  We are off to a location about 15 miles west of Winslow, it is the first confirmed and best preserved impact crater on earth.  Meteor Crater lies just a few miles south of I-40 after you get west of Winslow in the desert valley.  The San Francisco Mountains are another 43 miles to the west with Flagstaff spread out on their foothills.

As we pull into the parking lot of the Meteor Crater visitor center we can see that they have a major expansion project underway.  It would seem that the attraction is doing well and they are executing on a ten year improvement/expansion program.  Even at this early stage of construction we can tell it is going to be a pretty nice facility when they are done.

There is a museum, theater and gift shop to be explored but we got out to the crater first because the temperature was climbing quickly.  We'll get our hiking and climbing in up front and take in the air conditioned parts last.

It is an age-old problem for photographers, it is just about impossible to represent the scale of large things through the lens.  Two-dimensional media is a very poor representation of three dimensional grandeur.  But we took lots of pictures anyway to help us remember what we saw.

It is a mile wide across the top and 550 feet deep.  You could fit the whole of downtown San Francisco in the crater and the Transamerica Pyramid building would not rise above the rim.

The San Francisco Mountains as seen from the rim of Meteor Crater.  This view is across 43 miles of desert floor.  It is too hazy to see but Flagstaff lies at the foot of the big one on the left.

 

Kids, take note.  Yes that is your mother standing on a platform that is waaayyy off the ground.  I only jokingly gestured to her to go down there for a picture but was shocked when she said; "Okay" and took off for the platform.  We may have to go back to San Francisco to see if she will walk over the Golden Gate this time.

I had to get in on a platform picture too.  It is too far away to see but in the bottom center is a mine shaft, huge steam-powered winch and a ten foot tall by fifteen foot long boiler to power the winch.  All abandoned since about 1909.

To get access to one of the trails along the rim you had to participate in a guided tour, included in the $16/person admission price.  Our guide, Eduardo was both knowledgeable and entertaining plus he took a portrait of everybody in the tour with their own camera.

We had an onlooker.  I didn't recognize this particular lizard but I know he had one heck of a long tail.  I was quite a ways off when photographing him so his color is a little less brilliant looking than it was in real life.

 

After a stroll through the museum and gift shop it was getting along lunch time so we headed back to Homolovi Ruins Campground.  On the way in Cyndee decided we should drive on to one of the four ruin sites before going to the camper.  We picked site II and drove the five miles down the narrow asphalt road to the site.

Site II is a long way from anything.  We were out here mid-day and there was not another soul in sight.  This shot is standing on the ruin and looking back in the direction we came from.  You can just make out the thin ribbon of road on the left.

 

All the places we have ever been to before were extremely protective of their archaeological sites and artifacts, but here at Homolovi Ruins you literally walk into/on the ruins.  The quantity of artifacts just laying around on the ground is almost overwhelming.  Most of it is shards of pottery, all 700 years old.   Note: We took nothing but photos, all artifacts were looked at and placed back on the ground where they were found.

 



Cyndee came across a large piece of flint that someone had started to make into a point.

It seems that it is customary for visitors to the ruins to place pottery shards they find on a nearby rock as a display.  There were a lot of display rocks.

Hard to see in a photograph but every light-brown or tan rock you see is actually a piece of 700 year old pottery.  It was just laying thick on the ground everywhere.

In the center of the frame is a dugout room, one of about 1,300 on this site.  The green swath of vegetation in the distance is where the Little Colorado River cuts through the desert.

This rock seemed to be the gathering place for shards that have prominent designs on them.

This is one of the larger pieces and it has a distinct painted design on it.

This large piece really impressed me.  It was imprinted with a basket weave design.  There were also pieces that had scales, like a snake's skin.

There are so many artifacts! 

 

I think we came across a cousin of the critter we met at Meteor Crater this morning.  These guys have some of the longest legs and tails I have ever seen on a lizard.  The one below made it easy for me, he seemed to want his portrait taken as he let me get pretty close.

 

If you double click on this photo and enlarge it you can see what looks like exquisite bead work on his back.

 The clouds on the horizon have become quite large early in the day.  They are about 40 miles away and look like they are topping out at about 50,000 feet as they are beginning to form the classic anvil-top of a super cell that made it all the way up to the jet-stream.  Looks like we may have some powerful thunderstorms come our way this afternoon.  Time to get back to the camper and get some (late) lunch.

I think Cyndee has the Petrified Forest on her mind for tomorrow.