Cactopata have been spotted!

On the last leg of the first part of the trip now. Visited the crater, it was very interesting. The crater crashed into earth 50 thousand years ago, Kevin thinks. They haven’t found all of the pieces or the major piece of the meteor that created the 570 foot deep, 1 mile diameter crater with a 3 mile circumference. For perspective the Washington Monument is 555 feet tall. We did get to see and touch a piece of the meteor that was recovered about the size of a large duffle bag. It is made of mostly a mixture of iron and nickel. It took about 10 minutes from when it entered the atmosphere to impact, which means it was seen from Paris, five minutes later it was seen in NYC and 3 minutes later it pounded the earth where we just stood. The appx. 150 feet across meteor lost less than 1% of its speed, crashing into earth at 11 miles a second!! (Wish we had been making that kind of time!) About half of the substance broke away on impact spreading across the desert inn small pebble to small rock size pieces the other half buried deep into the ground beneath the crater floor. For years scientists and locals had tried to bore down through in attempts to recover larger pieces. This did allow them to be able to prove it was caused by a meteor but the attempts were unsuccessful at retrieving such a large portion of the meteor. From the crater’s rim it was hard to choose between looking at the awesomeness of the crater below or the vast view we had out over the open desert.

We are near Flagstaff now and I am going to attempt to code the guestbook function so ‘ya’ll’ can leave us messages. Tonight we’ll sleep in a hotel… so excited! But first we are going to have Kevin practice his usher duties at the rehearsal and enjoy dinner with the rest of the wedding party. Until the next time.

We have made it to Arizona, it feels liek we are home, well maybe not home but after driving nearly 2000 miles in less than 48 hours…

Most of Texas I slept through, and at about 3:00 am MST Kevin woke me up to switch driving. I think we both hate New Mexico it was long, boring and they are spending mega millions on road construction… we should give it back to Mexico and let them pay for road improvements (I say this because the road wasn’t nearly as bad at that in Oklahoma! So it doesn’t really matter if Mexico fixes them or not.)

We have seen some interesting things along the road, which we have been diligently snapping pictures of as we go (we are getting good at staying on the road while being photographer (they have laws about cell phone usage but not picture taking!) Windmills were aplenty, cows and horses without fences, amazing rock formations, lots of very L O N G trains. At about 4 am quitely crossed over the Continental Divide.

We are currently driving parallel to Interstate 40 looking for breakfast… its hard to find food in the desert! And just before entering Arizona I pulled off along the interstate to snap a few beautiful images of the sun rising behind a rock steppe. Unfortunately Kevin was asleep and did not seee the sunrise so like all of you he will have to imagine it with the help of the photographs.

We are not too far from Flagstaff and after breakfast will be traveling to Winslow, AZ to a meteor crater, www.meterocrater.com Ok we found a coffeeshop where we hope we have found breakfast too! We’ll post again after we’ve seen the giant hole in the desert caused from a cosmic collision.

It is 11:00 pm local time! I can’t believe a day and half later and we are in Texas!! Life is great, and better yet Kevin is still driving!! (I took photos to prove it!). Texas is mean though and puts their Welcome Center 100 miles into the state on Rt 40!! I think the logic being that at this point Texas is only about 200 miles wide and they can use one Welcome Center for guests entering from either side… still very cheesy.

I also just talked to an awesome person and we have added a stop to the trip we will be stopping for dinner in Chicago to see Jon!! So very excited about it all!

On the way to Memphis we took a detour into Jackson Tennessee where we went to a morning Farmer’s Market. It was mostly a vegetable market but we did get some fresh rolls for sandwich making which have been delicious, some blackberries and peaches.

After breakfast we drove to Memphis, where I got us lost because Tennessee circles are different from D.C., here they have ‘phillanges’. A few detours later had us headed arcoss the Mississippi River into Arkansas! Shortly into Arkansas Kevin woke from his slumber to do his daily 3 hours of driving (notice how he has been the one to do the posting and yet who has driven how many of those (now nearly 1500 miles) hasn’t been included!) I took a nap as we welcomed in Summer 2007 at 1:06pm near Little Rock. Otherwise Arkansas was pretty dull. At about 4:00pm Kevin turned the keys back to me, and as punishment for making me drive again I took him shopping.

Actually, we had to stop and get meat and cheese for our sandwiches, another case of water and some essentials that mistakenly got left at the apartment (Kevin forgot I use shampoo since I have hair on my head!). Back on the road and he was again asleep.

We got the first rain of the trip at 4:45 and although I was hoping for a tornado the rain has come and gone and still no swirling vortex of wind, cows and trucks.

We are now in Oklahoma on the far side of the Arkansas River just watching the last of the sun set beyond the seemingly endless fields. We are over half way there and thoroughly enjoying the time together on this our first real vacation together and the beautiful country.

Kevin’s been driving for an hour now, and we are on the West side of Oklahoma City so I’m guessing the he’ll work on the photos page in another two hours or so!

This entry is titled Catfish because every few exits is a sign, restaurant, storage company almost everything named Catfish. It’s like a cult of whiskered water dwelling animals!! Now onwards to Texas and New Mexico!

Oh and I have been given instructions to include this:

Trip Data So Far:

TOTALS:

• Total Driving Time = 24:05
• Total Milage = 1393.2
• Total Gallons of Gas = 44.95
• Average Miles/Gallon = 30.99
• Average Speed Miles/Hours = 58.05