Estrella: Sunset Crater

After the Vast Excitement of the blown tire, I am pleased to report that the rest of my trip home went smoothly. I was even left with enough time that I could do a little exploring on the drive — and so I did. I’d been told about a meteor crater along my route, so I set about looking for it; on my tiny, tiny road atlas was a marker for one ‘Sunset Crater National Monument’, so I drove in that direction.

…turns out it’s not the meteor crater at all, but instead a volcanic crater, but it was pretty awesome anyway. (I passed the actual meteor crater much later that day, but didn’t have time to stop — next year!) Sunset Crater is a cinder cone, the result of an eruption around a thousand years ago. It’s so recent that the resulting lava flows are barely eroded, that it’s nearly current events in Hopi legend.

It’s pretty awesome.

This isn’t a great picture — I mean, it’s got good framing and great contrast and all, but it’s kinda hard to see the shape of the cone. That’s it there on the left, though, behind the trees.

I could go on about the geology of the place, but I doubt most of y’all care (and for the ones who do, well, I linked the site up there so you can go look). So I’ll just post a couple more pics…this one is a basalt flow that cracked as it cooled, making a nice channel for a stream to flow through later.

A closeup of some of the basalt. This is really rough stuff — it’ll tear up your hands or feet something awful.

And, of course, the obligatory cat picture. Loiosh had a bunch of fun wandering around on the stuff — I’m glad his paw pads are really tough!

I climbed it Mom!

Estrella: Sunset Crater was posted on March 18th, 2010