Meteor Crater outside Flagstaff, Arizona/Petrified Forest/Painted Desert
The plan was to travel straight toward Albuquerque, New Mexico. But Interstate 40 offered a couple of detours worth checking out in this lifetime: Meteor Crater and the Petrified Forest.
Meteor Crater is less than a half hour's drive from Flagstaff. The site is a natural landmark that sits on private property owned partly by the Barringer family (hence the name Barringer Meteorite Site, of which that New York Times reporter Felicity Barringer is a granddaughter of the original owner.) The meteor struck that parcel of land 50,000 years ago apparently and pieces of that can be found seven miles away. I just found it fascinating that this is where part of that movie "Starman" was filmed.
After Meteor Crater, the plan was to head straight to New Mexico. However, Petrified Forest was just 18 miles away from I-40, and that wasn't too long a distance. And the trip was worth it, because the road from the forest led to Painted Desert. Two-for-one deal, and I like 2-for-1s! Plus, entrance fees to all national parks have been waived for the weekend. (So, this was actually a three-for-one deal, which was even better.)
The forest actually isn't even a forest in the contemporary sense. Instead, it's just a bunch of broken pieces of stone logs lying around. Impressive, nevertheless. Equally spectacular was the road leading to the Painted Desert, with mounds of stone showing a multitude of colors: grey (which actually isn't a color), green, yellow and red.
Total trip time to Moriarity, New Mexico was about 400 miles.
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