Mile 7725 – Entrance to Grand Canyon National Park, South Rim. Leave it to us to run into almost nothing but sun in the Alaska Inside Passage and the Pacific Northwest, both famous for rain and bad weather, only to get to the Arizona high desert and get soaked. Ever since we arrived in Southern California, the weather has turned on us, but today was the first day we had to alter our plans because of bad weather.
Instead of going to the Grand Canyon, which we heard was invisible, we went to the Meteor Crater near Winslow, Arizona, because it can be viewed in not-so-good weather and it has a visitor center that we could spend time in while it rained. On the entrance road was a sign: “Speed limit 50 mph for motor vehicles, 26,000 mph for meteors”. A meteorite slammed into the high Arizona plain here 50,000 years ago, and the crater is very well preserved. It is a privately held attraction because when the family offered it to the Park Service, back in the thirties, they declined.
Vintage Postcard Project: September 11: Meteor Crater, Arizona
[Photographs © 2012 P.J. Gardner. All Rights Reserved.]