A Different Kind of Crater, Frightened Trees, a Sunset Dinosaur. But first, a humble apology.

First things first: For all of you who were getting ready to send out a search party, I have to apologize for neglecting the blog for the last several weeks. For those of you who are interested in some of my creative excuses (I'm really good at them), let me know and I'll be happy to provide some. The best of them play off the themes of being busy taking amazing pictures to post (well, taking some adequate ones at least), not having good internet connections, driving cross country in a brief period of time, and just being really busy in general.

For those of you who aren't aware, we are now in the Pennsylvania and New Jersey area for the holidays and are inflicting ourselves on various family households in a pathetically parasitic manner. Good thing we haven't done so in a decade or so as we'll likely not be welcome back for another ten years after this...

In the next week or so, I endeavor to catch everyone up on our escapades, and I promise yet again not to allow things to lapse as they have. As an added bonus, I promise not to write too much- I'll try to simply post a bunch of photos, particularly of the crane festival in New Mexico.

The following three photos depict a really big hole in the ground in the middle of Northern Arizona, and a piece of what caused the hole. I had all kinds of information and facts to share with you about the crater, but it's been so long that I've forgotten them (like you really wanted to hear them anyway). Bottom line: big meteor = big hole and a pretty cool stop. Thinking about what it must have been like at the time of impact brings to mind the movie Armageddon, though without the splintering Empire State Building and other urban destruction.





The next half dozen pictures are of the afore-mentioned frightened trees. For those of you who may be pun-impaired: petrified forest...get it? yeah I know, but sometimes I can't help it. Unfortunately, we had spent too much time at the previously mentioned hole in the ground, so we weren't able to spend as much time as we would have liked here, so it makes the list of possible places for a return visit.







Just as amazing as the process by which these trees were transformed into their hardened state (via the replacement of the wood fibers by various minerals while the fallen trees steeped in their mineral bath) is the fact that this desert area was once treed to begin with, and then was covered by the water which allowed this to occur.

As we headed out of the park, the sun was setting as we once again crossed a portion of what was once the Historic Route 66. We've had the pleasure of many beautiful desert sunsets, and have been on or paralleled Route 66 for the better part of several states, but this particular confluence provided an interesting perspective of the recent dinosaurs that roamed the area.




OK, before I sign out for this particular blog, it's time for another musical related trivia question. Around this time frame of our trip, we drove through a town to check out a particular location. Name the town, the specific location and why we did this, as well as the band that made it famous. Extra credit for the author. This one's already too easy, so I can't say any more, other than the fact that the quality of your prize will in part be based upon the quality and completeness of the first correct answer (google on, Karen).