Sedona Arizona

We stayed overnight in Holbrook (a good stopping point between Santa Fe and Sedona) and got quite the nice dusting of snow overnight. The wide open high (5,000 ft) desert became a winter wonderland. Nice treat.

As we headed towards Sedona we made a stop to visit Meteor Crater Natural Landmark. This crater, Meteor Crater, or Barringer Crater, is a meteorite impact crater. Despite historic attempts to make the crater a public landmark, the crater remains privately owned by the Barringer family to the present day through their Barringer Crater Company, which proclaims it to be the "best-preserved meteorite crater on Earth".

The crater was created about 50,000 years ago during the Pleistocene epoch, when the local climate on the Colorado Plateau was much cooler and damper. The area was an open grassland dotted with woodlands inhabited by mammoths and giant ground sloths.

The object that excavated the crater was a nickel-iron meteorite about 160 ft (50 m) across. The speed of the impact has been a subject of some debate. Modeling initially suggested that the meteorite struck at up to 45,000 mph (20 km/s), but more recent research suggests the impact was substantially slower, at 29,000 mph (12.8 km/s). About half of the impactor's bulk is believed to have been vaporized during its descent through the atmosphere.^[19] Impact energy has been estimated at about 10 megatons TNT_e. The meteorite was mostly vaporized upon impact, leaving few remains in the crater.

As you are approaching the crater there are several signs showing how many miles before you reach the impact sight....this was my favorite sign:

This is looking into the impact crater. It is difficult to see how large this crater is until you look through one of their telescopes on the observation deck. It shows you life size cut outs of an astronaut and an American flag (see picture below). Now look back at the crater picture and zoom in to find the fencing surrounding the mine shaft where Barringer dug down trying to find the actually meteor that crashed into the site. Scientists now believe that the meteor pretty much dissolved upon impact. Only fragments have been found.

This picture was taken through the telescope pinpointing where the astronaut and American flag are located in the bottom of this extensive crater.

Why the astronaut in the center of the crater? "Throughout the 1960s, NASA scientists and technicians worked relentlessly to train their astronauts for the Apollo missions to come. Locations throughout Arizona were selected by the United States Geological Survey’s new astrogeology branch to serve as lunar analogues—the moon right here at home. Arizona had plenty of existing craters, exposed canyons, volcanic cinder cones, and lava fields to test NASA’s people, suits, vehicles, and equipment."

We entered the town of Sedona through Oak Creek Canyon, a 30 mile drive from Flagstaff to Sedona and is a winding two lane highway that passes through beautiful scenery. The snow gave us some striking views.

The red cliffs of Sedona are so striking. There are many trails to discover the beauty on foot. Okay, I cheated and used someone else's pictures below. The lighting wasn't all that great for pictures while we were there but I wanted to give a fair representation of how red and beautiful the Sedona surroundings were. Someone sure got great pictures!!

The hike we enjoyed this time was Red Rock State Park. The first part of the hike is among age old Cottonwood trees with their silver white barks and unique branch growth. We did encounter some deer grazing and watched them for quite a while. They sensed we were there but weren't alarmed. The second half of the hike wound up to Eagle's Nest and an overlook of the Red Rock State Park valley below. I was fascinated with textures along the way and wanted to share some of these pictures with you.

Oak Creek

Early morning frost

Cottonwood bark

Lichen splotched rock

Lichen hugging on tree bark

Big stickers on a prickly pear

Dried foliage shining in the sunlight

Red rock with lye patches exposed

View from Eagle's Nest looking back down at the valley in the park

Fuzzy purple prickly pear....probably not the fuzzy you want to touch

Beautiful silver multi-trunked leafless Cottonwood trees in the riparian zone in the valley along Oak Creek. Parts of these tree barks are smooth to the touch and eyes.