I'm sitting at a table on lobby balcony of the El Tovar Hotel on the rim of the Grand Canyon.
Sipping wine and posting to this Journal, what could go wrong?
Well I'm standin' on the corner in Winslow Arizona
such a fine sight to see,
It's a girl my lord in a flat bed Ford
Slowin' down to take a look at me.
Written by Jackson Browne
Sung and Released by "The Eagles" 1972
This song has become the "National Anthem" of Winslow, the "Take it Easy" town. There is a Standin' on the Corner Park, Standin' on the Corner Museum and half a dozen retail operations cashing in on the song's mention of Winslow. We joined in by standin' on the corner ourselves and eating at the "Flatbed Cafe".
We actually stayed in the Jackson Browne room at La Posada, the lyricist of this great song.
About 50,000 years ago a piece of an asteroid entered our earth's atmosphere. Traveling in excess of 26,000 thousand miles per hour the hunk of iron and nickel crashed into the surface of the Arizona desert, exploding just a few yards before impact. The result was a meteor crater. 50,000 years later Daniel Barringer, a mining engineer, purchased the land that the crater was on planning on getting the hunk of iron he thought had to be sitting just below the floor of the crater. Soon enough he figured out the the metal had essentially vaporized and reduced to un-minable dimensions. Though a financial bust, his work did pave the way towards understanding impact craters. I've known of this site for many years, seeing it with my own eyes was exciting.
This is the largest piece of the meteorite found.
Right off of "Route 66" is Walnut Canyon National Monument. This is a narrow deep canyon that supported a population of cliff dwelling Pueblo Indians. With wind gusts at 65 miles per hour we could not take the trails to the bottom of the canyon but the views from the top were still awe inspiring,
If ever I wonder whether or not the American Southwest was an area of volcanic activity, the first thing for me to do is to return to Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument. Huge lakes of hardened lava and the 2,000 foot cinder volcano cones should be enough to remind me.
Finally, someplace we visited on our travels. Before we got to Winslow, we dragged (for several hundred miles) the cord that connected power between our rig and the tow car. Whoops. Our campground host found a guy in town who fixed it and then delivered it to our camp site. Such a great guy. Such a great camp host. But it sounds like you two are doing a higher brow version of our trip. How could that be?
ReplyDeleteActually, the La Posada has two RV hook-ups, and once hooked up the hotel and grounds are there for your use. So I’d say we pretty much are doing the same trip. We even had an electrical problem, (lamp wasn’t plugged in). Is that spooky or what?
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