Meteor Crater aka: Barringer Meteor Crater

I was driving school bus for the Flagstaff School District 1997-99. One of the perks is driving the kids to places I wasn’t able to go to when I was their ages. I remember Meteor Crater the most.

The view is breathtaking, not only because of the vast landscape but you realize there’s more to this universe than just this planet.

Something to keep in mind… even though you’re only a few hundred feet above the surrounding desert floor, you’re still over 6k feet above sea level. The air starts getting a little thin up there.

If you’ve got really good eyes (or a telephoto lens), you can see a cutout of an astronaut way down in the crater, near the mining equipment. I didn’t notice it until I got home and looked at my pictures.

Don’t forget to take a look at the wall they have showing all the manned flights into space, and a small memorial for those astronauts who have been killed as part of the space program.

Oh, and they don’t let you hike down into the crater anymore. You can tour along the ridgeline, but you can’t go down to the bottom like my dad tells me he has done.

expensive and kind of lame, it was worth the visit, but i expected more, it was almost like you couldnt get close enough to appreciate the immensity

Expensive when all you get is a view of a hole in the ground – kind of a let-down.

Numerous movies have been filmed at Meteor Crater, including Starman. It was also used for training before lunar missions.

While the Grand Canyon is breathtaking, so is Meteor Crater, just in an entirely different way. It’s massive, and to think of what would happen if another meteor that size crashed into the planet…

I would go there again.

..so that people can get an idea of what they’re standing next to while at the observatory. Seeing it from above just gives the whole phenomenon a new chilling perspective. That said, it’s neat to stand by it. It doesn’t compare to the Grand Canyon, but that’s a really unfair comparison, really. Even long dead huge meteors need sugar.

The weirdest part is getting there from I-40. You go on this tiny road for six miles, and you often encounter these free roaming tagged cows. You can make your own Pink Floyd album cover using these cows, if they’re interested enough.

I got to touch something that was from outer space! How can you NOT go?

This place is awesome. While you’re there, and with a little luck, you’ll be able to find a meteorite fragment and check that off your to-do list on 43things.com.