The Meteor Crater, and The Grand Canyon

 The next attraction we stopped at was 154 miles down Route 66. The Meteor Crater  is in Winslow, Arizona and I would definitely recommend stopping for this one. Go to google earth and search The Meteor Crater, you will be amazed to find that this huge hole exists in our country. I'm not being sarcastic. It is freaking huge and amazing! I think it was one of the highlights of the trip, although this was before we got sick of driving and had the choice of staying where we were or sucking it up and finishing the trip. It is about 4,000 ft in diameter, 570 ft deep, and is surrounded by a rim that rises 150 ft above the surrounding plains. That means if you were standing on the rim of the crater and the St. Louis Arch was at the bottom, you would almost be looking straight into the windows. Pretty cool, especially if you've been to the Arch. If you haven't been, GO! It's the tallest monument in the country (630 ft)!! Sorry, I have to stick up for STL since to everyone else in the country thinks we only grow corn and noodle for fish (look it up). Anyway, The Meteor Crater is cool.

 From here it was a short drive to Flagstaff. I think we stayed in a free camp ground that night, I remember there was a sign warning of mountain lions and Chris slept in the van instead of the tent. He turned out to be the smarter man, I froze my butt off! This was when I learned it's true that it gets cold at night in the desert. Thankfully no mountain lions though.
 After thawing out, we set off for the Grand Canyon. This turned out to be a little farther out of the way than we thought, about 100 miles one way! After seeing a huge hole in the ground the day before, and driving for three hours, the Grand Canyon was a little anticlimactic. The best part about this leg of the journey was watching a Chinese lady be amazed while she took pictures of a crow picking through a trash can. I wanted to take a picture of her doing this but I didn't want to get beat up by a bus full of 70 year old Chinese tourists. So, after about an hour we hit the road again.
 Check back next week to find out how much trouble two 18 year olds can get into in Las Vegas!