Meteor crater, Winslow, Petrified Forest and Canyon de Chelly 10-12 Nov

Tue 10
After a lie in (since we were up so early yesterday) we made our way nearly 40 miles out of Flagstaff to visit the Meteor Crater. It is supposed to be the best preserved meteor crater in the world, not because of any human intervention or anything but because it is fairly recent and hasn't eroded. About 50,000 years ago a meteor the size of a house (perhaps 30 to 40m across) crashed into the earth on the unbroken Arizona plain at 26,000 miles per hour, that's about 7 miles per second. It is estimated to have had a mass of several hundred thousand tons and consisted of mainly iron with some nickel and traces of diamond, gold and titanium (as I said yesterday about the part of it on display in the Lowell Observatory). The explosion was equivalent to about 20 million tons of TNT and was so hot that the meteorite vaporised except for the few chunks that have been found; these chunks must have broken off the main meteor before the impact. The crater is 700 feet deep (about 200m) and 4000 feet across ( about 1250m). About 175 million tons of earth (mainly limestone and sandstone) were ejected to form the crater rim and was littered for over a mile around the impact site. A shock wave raced across the plain and devastated/flattened everything for several miles. The vaporised meteorite rose up in a hot cloud above the impact and as the cloud cooled they formed tiny spherical balls of iron and nickel that can be found all around the crater for several miles. To give you an idea of the size, the crater could hold 20 or so full sized football pitches and two million spectators could observe from the sloping sides. In the bottom of the crater we could spot a mine shaft, this is where digging took place in the 1920s in an unfruitful attempt to find the meteorite. However the drill got stuck at 1376 feet deep without anything found except for oxidized fragments of iron and nickel. We gawped at the crater for a while and then went inside where Tristan destroyed the world, then the United States and then various other places on earth on a meteor simulator where you chose the properties of the meteorite, such as speed, density, angle of impact, size etc.
A short film on meteors and impacts made Tristan even more enthusiastic about the possibilities of earth annihilation and we spent the next 20 mins on the road talking about aliens and all things spacey......... until we reached Winslow. We had to go and stand on the corner in Winslow Arizona, such a fine sight to see, there's a girl, my Lord, in a flat bed Ford slowing down to take a look at me. If you haven't a clue what I'm talking about then don't worry. But for those of you who like The Eagles (Take it Easy) you will be very jealous!!!!!! Another 40 minutes on from Winslow took us to the Petrified Forest where we walked amongst the stone tree trunks and admired the beauty of the colours that appeared as they petrified. The trees are thought to be a relative of the Monkey Puzzle Tree that grew in the warm tropical climates on Pangea some 225 million years ago. It is thought that a huge storm felled many of the trees that fell into rivers and streams and were transported to a flood plain where, waterlogged, they sank to the bottom of the slower moving waters. A volcanic eruption then covered the sunken logs in huge amounts of ash and silica which prevented the rotting process. The silica slowly replaced the cellulose in the plant cells and the other elements released from the cells caused the amazing variety of colours that we see in the stone today. The plain was uplifted by tectonic activity and now these ancient stone trees lie on the surface, some as entire trunks but normally broken into 2 or 3 foot chunks. On some the bark is clearly visible - amazing. We drove on through the park to to the North to the Painted Desert where Badlands' type formations are covered in brightly coloured layers. The sun was going down and the shadows were great but it was not the best time for taking photos, except of the setting sun which formed a huge red splodge across the Western Horizon. Finally we drove North, in the fading light and then complete darkness of this unpopulated region, some 100 miles to reach Canyon de Chelly (pronounced Chey) to be ready for out 8:30am start tomorrow around the park.
Wed 11
By 8:30 we were in the gift shop awaiting our transport and guide to go into the canyon. In order to drive in the canyon you must have a Navajo guide as this is all Navajo land. There is only one trail down which you can walk without a guide and we wanted to see more of the cliff dwellings and the ancient rock art. We had a fantastic day driven by a Navajo called Johnson in a 1952 ex army truck with a modified back to fit seating. Our fellow travellers were a group of 60 or 70 something Americans who all found the experience very cold; whilst Tristan sat in a shirt they were in layers of coats and scarves and covered in blankets! We spent 7.5 hours travelling up the various canyons and stopping at various points for our guide to explain some of the sites and the history of the area. In brief there are 3 known civilizations that have, at various times, inhabited these canyons. The first for which there is evidence (though they believe that there must have been people here before that) was the Anasazi from 300 to 1300AD. They are responsible for the cliff cave dwellings that are made out of fallen stone fitted together with a mud mortar, with some wooden beams driven into holes in the cliff face. The main structures that have survived where built after 1200AD but a few simpler / cruder structures do remain from before that time. The second civilization was the Hopi people, there is no evidence that they fought with the Anasazi for the territory, therefore it is believed that the Anasazi abandoned the canyon, perhaps after several years of drought, and, after a resumption of a wetter climate, the Hopi just moved in. The final civilization was the Navajo, who arrived in about 1400 and fought the Hopi and ejected them, and here they are still but after a fraught time during the early years of the United States. During the 1800s some Mexicans and Spaniards came into the valley looking for gold, they didn't find any but did find the Navajo elderly, women and children alone in their settlements as the young men were out hunting. The women and children were taken and sold into slavery in Mexico. When the men folk returned they found there families gone and, assuming it was the work of other tribes outside the canyon, they started searching amongst their neighbours lands and sometimes stole stock. The neighbours complained to the government that the Navajo were causing unrest and so in came the cavalry. Many Navajo hid out in the rocks for weeks but many others were rounded up and crops and livestock were destroyed. The captured, mainly the elderly, women and children, were taken on 'The Long Walk', a 300 mile walk in search of a settlement for the Navajo on which many of them died. Eventually after 3 years they were allowed to return to the Canyon and have been farming and raising livestock here ever since. There was rock art from all three cultures on the rocks, some carved into the rock and some drawn on the rock. The rocks themselves are sandstone, some of it very pale cream in colour and other reddish. There are dark streaks down the rocks where the water pours. In the canyon trees planted by the Civilian Corps in the early part of the 20th Century are now being removed slowly but surely by slash and burn, the trees are actually huge water users and a huge menace, but they looked beautiful in their Autumn colours. There are free roaming horses and cattle that look really fat and healthy so there must be something good to eat out there amongst the scrubby plants and cacti. There can be up to 3 feet of floodwater in the spring so I guess we are just seeing it at the driest and brownest time of year. The Anasazi grew corn, watermelon, cotton and squash here and the Navajo grow the same (except cotton), using some of the old Anasazi buildings as stores; there is no evidence for the Hopi but it is assumed that they grew similar crops. At one of the stops we made there were Navajo craftsmen with their wares, since there are only 2 tours that pass that spot it must be worth their while (we came back the same way about 1 hour later and you wouldn't have known that anyone had been there!) We tried Navajo fry bread which was like a tortilla that Cuma makes (a bread made of self raising flour and water and then fried), and Pinons which are Pine Nuts that are collected, washed and then boiled, dried and sprinkled with salt - delicious. Tristan bought a dream catcher made from deer hide and a small piece of rock art of an Anasazi fertility symbol that we have seen in lots of places. It is a small bent over man playing a flute with a corn stalk and the sun, he is called Kokopelli. He is still influential, to many pueblo peoples, in fertility and abundance, whether it be the hunt, the fields or human reproduction. It was a thrilling day with lots of rocking and rolling over the rough terrain, fabulous scenery and awesome historical sites and information. We returned windswept, happy and gasping for a cup of tea!!

Thu 12
Today we made the long journey up into Utah over some fantastic terrain. We could see the grand, towering cliffs of Monument Valley in the distance and had some close up encounters with rocks and cliffs ourselves. We crossed over windswept, high plains through the Navajo land with loose horses and cattle everywhere, and we crossed another dam across the Colorado River at Powell Lake. We are now camped in a little town called Kanab, ready for our assault on Zyon tomorrow.