Looking up for worship, looking outside for apples and looking down for science

Flagstaff Anglican Church

Today was another full and rewarding day in Arizona. Joan and I miss going to church when we are on the road and often look for a nearby Anglican church to attend.

The Flagstaff Anglican Fellowship, like our own church in Flint, meets in a community center and has the “fun” of setting up and tearing down their service each week.

We were warmly greeted and were very much included in the worship and Bible study that they held during the service in lieu of a sermon. If we find our way here again we will look forward to stopping in and visiting with our new friends at Flagstaff Anglican.

Flagstaff Anglican Church

They had a nice mix of people and some wonderful college students from nearby Northern Arizona University.

Before church we stopped by the Flagstaff Farmer’s Market in downtown Flagstaff. We enjoy fresh fruit and we have found that the local Farmer’s Markets are often the best places to shop for that. Because our plans are taking us away from our trailer for a week starting Thursday, we bought just a few apples and a fresh loaf of Sourdough break to get us through until we travel to California without the trailer.

Flagstaff Farmer's Market

At the Market someone had converted an old ambulance into a coffee wagon and painted “Coffee 911” on the side. Very clever, I thought.

After church we headed east on I-40 to visit Meteor Crater, something that is very special to Joan as she often taught her students about the crater during her 8^th grade science classes.

Coffee 911

I had the nagging feeling during our visit that I had stopped there before, but I’ll have to wait to hear from my father (a faithful reader of this blog) whether or not it was possible that we stopped at this attraction during one of our trips back to the Midwest in the 1950s and 1960s.

Once at the crater we had our lunch in the car and then headed through the gate. Dang, I forgot the coupons I clipped, but we still got a $1 off each for being old.

The Meteor Crater is a private monument, one the government had a chance to buy many years ago, but at that time, according to our tour guide, the federal government felt “one big hole in Arizona was enough for the government to own.”

Meteor Crater

Joan was pretty much blown away by the size of the crater. It is 2 ½ miles around, nearly a mile across and 550-feet deep. At one time it is estimated the crater was 700-feet deep with the rim currently rising 150-feet above the prairie. Wind and water erosion has shrunk the overall size of the crater during the past 50,000 years.

At one point I asked Joan if the crater was what she expected from her studies. “It is much bigger than I thought,” she said.

It is truly amazing to stand at the top of the observation deck at one of the highest points of the crater and realize that at one time the area was level with the ground around it. Level, that is, until a 150-feet meteor crashed into the earth at about 40,000 mph leaving a gaping crater in the earth.

Eduardo our tour guide to Meteor Crater

Our tour guide was Eduardo, who Joan recognized as one of the narrators of a science film she used to show to her students. Eduardo was very impressed that Joan recognized him from the video and said he was recently interviewed and filmed for a coming IMAX movie.

His one-hour tour was informative and light and we learned a lot about not just the crater, but the history of how it became a tourist attraction instead of an iron mine.

Joan and Jim, photo by Eduardo

A mining engineer, Daniel Barringer, figured out that contrary to previous speculation, the crater was the result of a large meteorite and not volcanic activity and purchased the crater property more than 100 years ago. His idea was to mine the rich iron he suspected would be buried in the center of the site with the intact meteorite.

While Barringer correctly determined that a meteor had caused the crater, he incorrectly assumed that the remaining meteorite would stay intact. It did not bury itself as Barringer believed, but rather it smashed into a zillion pieces and basically vaporized.

Later his family and some other investors mined a different kind of activity out of the site – tourists. In addition to the Museum and Crater Tours, the company operates an RV Park near the site.

As mentioned earlier, the federal government had the opportunity to purchase the property as a monument early on – probably after Barringer discovered there was no rich iron to mine – but declined. Later the government did name the site a National Landmark in 1968.

Looking back at Flagstaff from the crater rim

Astronauts involved in the Apollo moon landings trained at the site because scientists believed its terrain would closely approximate what the astronauts would see on the moon. There is an American flag and astronaut figure at the bottom of the crater in honor of that training. Old mining equipment also remains on the floor.

One thing that is not on the floor are tourists, who are not allowed to climb down into it.

Meteor Crater is considered the best preserved of all known meteor craters on earth.

We spent about 2 ½ hours at the site enjoying the film, tour and museum at the attraction. The view from the rim of the crater of the surrounding Arizona countryside is stunning to say the least.

Once home, Joan fixed us breakfast, which was really a full breakfast. Pancakes, eggs and bacon make for one of my favorite dinners. On top of all that our two favorite football teams, The Detroit Lions and the Buffalo Bills, came out winners today. So all is good.

Now a few tidbits that have been rattling around in my head.

Joan on the platform overlooking the crater

The weather in northern Arizona has been great. Days are in the low 80s and the nights fall into the 40s. Each day has been filled with sunshine and we had a little spit of rain for less than a minute on Saturday as we drove back from Oak Creek Canyon. We also had a little spit of rain today.

I love the early mornings when the air is crisp and clear and the only noise I can hear is a distant train engine.

Sometimes amidst all the beauty that surrounds us, Joan and I will simply stop and thank God for the blessings we have. The gift of family, good friends, travel and health occasionally overcomes us with gratefulness. We wish the same for everyone.

The only real problem I am having is the urge to take pictures of everything I see. Sometimes when I return to the trailer at night I’ll download the photos and find out I’ve taken 150 shots. Obviously that would not have worked in the day of film, but there is just so much beauty to see here.

Joan still on the platform overlooking the crater

Everywhere we travel in the Southwest reminds me of trips I made with my Dad and stepmother back in the 1950s and early 1960s. I see side roads that remind me of the times my father took my brother, me and a trusty JC Higgins, single-shot .22-caliber, bolt action rifle out into the desert to shoot army men.

You know, those little green plastic artillery men who were either standing or crouched in a shooting position. Mixed in were small tanks, jeeps and artillery men. They came in a large bag and we would mutilate them until they could neither stand nor be recognized any more. I can still smell the sweet scent of gunpowder as we would eject each shell and load the next shot.

Of course, we never shot any American army men, we imagined they were Germans or Japanese soldiers, likely due to the proximity of the last Great War to our time as children. Probably not politically correct, but the term, fortunately, had not been invented yet.

The astronaut and flag at the bottom of the crater (center-r)

Here’s a free tip for you: If you can possibly avoid it, never, and I mean ever, buy gas in Williams, Arizona. We have crossed Arizona on I-40, driven up and down Highway 89 and through several towns and never found gas prices as high as they are right here in Williams.

Fortunately I discovered that fact before I ran so low on gas I was forced to buy here. For example yesterday when we traveled to Wupatki and Sunset Crater Volcano we saw gas prices ranging from $3.45 to $3.59 in and around Flagstaff. In Williams, it was $4.09 for regular. One station off the freeway and downtown had it for $3.81. Today I filled up for $3.39 a gallon at a Pilot just outside Williams, where the gas remained at $4.09.

The best gas prices we have seen so far on this trip was the $3.19 a gallon we saw in Oklahoma.

Sad that a city that sees itself as the Gateway to the Grand Canyon and a tourist destination would so blatantly gouge the very people they want to come here.

Another fun tidbit that has no relation to what we have been doing here is the weather forecasts from Phoenix. Our cable service at the RV park features a number of Phoenix network stations.

They were so excited that fall had arrived and that temperatures were going to drop into the double digits. “It’s going to be only 98 on Sunday,” the attractive weather person said. And she was serious.

Of course when you have regularly been at 108 I guess 98 does seem cool. But don’t forget: It’s a dry heat.