Meteor Crater/Petrified Forest/Painted Desert

Meteor Crater

Minutes away from Meteor RV park you will find the world’s best-preserved meteorite impact site on Earth.  Located just minutes from Interstate 40 and the old Route 66 in Northern Arizona near Winslow.  Meteor Crater is the spectacular result of a collision that rocked the American Southwest approximately 50,000 years ago with the energy of more than 20 million tons of TNT.  Situated under the wide skies of the Arizona High Desert, Meteor Crater offers an interactive educational experience for the entire family in a beautiful, natural setting.  

The Meteor Crater Visitor Center is located on the rim of the Crater.  The fully air-conditioned building features an 80 seat Widescreen theater, indoor crater viewing area, Crater Trail access, Interactive Discovery Center, Artifacts and Exhibits, Gift Store and Rock Shop, and Subway Restaurant.  Elevators and ADA accessibility are available for guests with special needs.

This has been a destination location for Ginny and me for many years. We spent the morning in the visitors center and exploring the crater from above. The hike for Ginny and I seemed a to be a bit more than we wanted to bite off so we headed east, Winslow. 

Route 66/Winslow, AZ

The Eagles song “Take It Easy” was just echoing in our heads as we made our way down historic RT66. Much to our surprise, there is very little left of downtown Winslow with the exception of a tribute to the song. In the center of town, you will find a mural, a statue and of course the flatbed Ford. It is truly a great picture spot where you will find many tourists doing the same thing. The location is dotted we gift shops and blasting the song over and over again. Sadly that is about all there is to Winslow from what we could see.

That pretty much rounded out our day and it was back to Meteor RV Park for some barbeque and just sitting out admiring the big clear Arizona sky.  

Petrified Forest/Painted Desert

The next morning we decided to get an early start to these National Parks about an hour away from the RV Park. You will end up taking RT 40 to Holbrook, home of The WigWam Hotel off RT 66. This town was famously depicted in the animated movie “CARS”. The hotel complex is still standing and open. Yes, you can actually stay in a Teepee and you will find classic cars and trucks including “Tater” dotting the property.

After a quick spin around Holbrook, we head southeast down RT180 to the entrance of Petrified Forest National Park. I don’t believe I have mentioned this prior, but we acquired our Senior Lifetime National Parks passes a few years back. This allows us free access to all the National Parks across the USA. Here is a link to the site regarding these passes, I would highly recommend one. Senior National Park Pass

Petrified

The ride SE down RT180 was pretty flat left and right with a few buttes in the distance to the north and mesas to the south. Upon entering the park there is very little to see until you arrive at the visitor center. It’s here you begin to see the fields of petrified trees. We travel with our dog, Zoey. Checking with the park rules we found out that dogs on leash are welcome in the park. The visitors center area offers fantastic vistas and a large presentation of petrified logs and artifacts. 

Petrified Forest National Park is a surprising place, offering far more than the world-renowned petrified logs. You can see so much just from your car and a few stops at overlooks. Get out and walk one of the short maintained trails or even hiking into the backcountry along one of the Off the Beaten Path routes for even more discoveries! There are fossils, badlands, buttes and mesas, ancient petroglyphs, wildlife and wildflowers, and vast vistas for more than a hundred miles!

Painted/Trouble

Feeling good about what we just saw we headed north toward Painted Desert National park. This park for us was all about the vista from any number of pull off’s and designated overlooks. 

We got to the first vista past the visitor’s center and I noticed something odd about the front passenger side tire. It had a 4-inch gash in it with a piece of the tire about to come off. This was a rather large problem that needed to be addressed rather quickly. We limped back into Holbrook and called AAA to see if we could get the tire changed. I guess that extra day that we built into site see turned out to be a god sent. We had a bite to eat and AAA showed up rather quickly and got us up and running.

This could have been a disaster waiting to happen if I had not seen that cut. Someone was watching over us, thank god