We got up and leisurely got our things around. Then we started towards Santa Fe. Eric had called his great uncle Chan the night before and he seemed to think it would take over a day to get there, but I thought we could have made it easily in one day if we got going early. However, Uncle Chan requested an extra day to get ready.
So we didn’t hesitate to stop when we saw a sign for the meteor crater. Upon discovering that admission to the crater is fifteen dollars a person, we hesitated, but we had already driven the six miles out of our way and had gotten more and more excited along the way, especially when the humongous form of the crater walls came into view.
We paid and quickly ran up the stairs to see the huge crater. We glimpsed the rim of the crater but went to a short movie about the formation of this natural phenomenon before exploring it. Then we went through the museum and learned a lot about meteors and where they come from and what they are made of. Next we participated in an hour long guided walking tour along the crater’s rim.
Our tour guide was a spunky Mexican named Eduardo. He was very knowledgeable and also told a lot of jokes. We learned that the huge hole is as deep as the Washington monument is tall. The meteor’s impact created a crater large enough to fit twenty football fields and within ten seconds and literally turned the earth’s crust inside out! Early discoverers of the hole assumed it had been created by a volcanic eruption, but in the 1960’s it was scientifically proven to have been created by a meteor impact. Some shit from space blew a hole in the earth! Its pretty amazing if you really think about it.
We enjoyed the crater a bit more, then got a Subway sandwich and continued on our way. We found some hotel coupons at a rest stop and stayed at a Sands Motel for cheap that night. We ignored the warnings on our camp stove that told us we would die if we used it indoors, cracked a window, and cooked some of rice tomato beef soup concoction.
- Virginia
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