day 13 -- tucson to flagstaff

rolled out of tucson at 9.30am energized from the run and itchy's scrambled eggs and then immediately needed to take a nap. found a roadside picnic table, took the obligatory pic of a saguaro (promised myself that this was the only one I'd take, but soon broke that one) and dozed off until a friendly cop pulled in and checked on my health when he saw the mostly healed but still pink scars on my arm (I think it kinda looks like little more than eczema). so off again through desert scrub that looked like new mexico except now with saguaro patrolmen. climbed again this time into mining country and the bluejay copper mine in miami, AZ. the didn't-leave-enough-time-to-reach destination for this evening was the barringer meteor crater. from time to time I remembered that this is something I've always wanted to see, or that 12-year-old aaron-with-a-moonscape-mural-on-his-wall wanted to see, but I didn't really have a good idea where it was / hadn't bothered to check. was relieved to find that it was still ahead to the northeast, so instead of a planned loop past phoenix and up to flagstaff through prescott, I veered off the scenic route and toward winslow, AZ, hoping to make it to the crater before sunset. of course, though I'd promised myself that I'd avoid falling into the collecting archaeological sites trap, when I happened by cliff dwellings above lake roosevelt, I couldn't resist. that the misnamed anasazi decided to start living on dramatic cliff faces in the 11th century made them much more archaeologically visible and inevitably romantic as well. pueblos and hohokam great houses and the like are just as socially interesting, but people climbing 35-foot ladders to live in cramped dark caves is naturally alluring. so I stripped off the leather and exhanged it for shorts and running shoes and climbed a short paved trail to these ruins, supposedly now guarded by africanized honeybees. initially that sounded like a dubious way to keep tourists off the ruins, but since other ruins have more permanent barriers than the hastily thrown-up cones and sign here, I believed it. (not that climbing around on ruins is all that more instructive than appreciating from a few yards away.) a couple of college-aged wisconsiners tried to get me to convince them that it was okay to disregard the ranger's warning, but I demurred...and they came tittering back when one heard a buzz.

this put me a bit off schedule for the crater, but uninformed optimism is the best kind, so with only a vague idea of mileage I pressed on. and there was a desert road toward winslow that was wide open and smooth, so I opened it up and made great time into another scrap-of-rt 66 community before a stretch of the dreaded I-10. I got over a fear of truck traffic on interstates when I was forced onto I-75 in toledo on the ontario trip, but that doesn't make them more appealing. it's invariably windier on the broad open road and less scenic...and in this case straight into the setting sun. but there's no other way to the crater. billboards emphasized that this is the best preserved meteor crater on the planet, and there were other such encouraging signs on the entrance road. weirdly the signs continued to extol the virtues of the crater even after I'd traveled 6 miles off the interstate, as if I was likely to turn around if I didn't know about the 10 minute movie and guided walking tour. I arrived with time to spare, paid the entry fee and headed past apollo astronaut barracks to the crater. pics galore. best part of the museum, which continued to sell the site even after you'd paid to get in, in a very 19th century museum/circus kind of way that you find at this sort of anti-national park holdout site. I was reminded serveral times that this was the best preserved meteor crater on the planet, and that scientists found indisputable confirmation of meteor strikes on earth here first. there was constant reference to dr. eugene shoemaker's contributions in this regard, as if his phD was a magic badge. beyond the braggadocio the museum was packed with interactive exhibits like one that allowed you to model a meteor impact (size, speed, angle of impact) so as to see what it would take to destroy the planet. overwhelming and breathless in route 66 carnival way that a more restrained NPS museum couldn't capture.