Friday, July 29, 2016

Speed limit 26,000 MPH - Day 6

Today we traveled from Gallup, New Mexico to Tucson, Arizona. Along the way, we had one major stop planned and a stop at Tucson International airport to pickup another participant in this crazy adventure. 

Our major planned stop was Meteor Crater, Arizona, the site of one of the best preserved meteor impacts on the planet. The last time I visited this site was 27 years ago when I travelled with my brother Nick from Las Vegas to Saint Mary's of the Plains in Kansas. He was drafted by the school to play basketball. Of course, in those days we did not have auto-pilot. On that trip, I had planned to take a leisurely jaunt down I-40 with a couple of overnight stays. Nick had different plans, we ended up driving the whole thing flat out, other than the stop to visit the meteor. and to eat. But I digress, back to our Tesla journey. 
In addition the meteor to having scientific and geologic significance, there's technological significance. The Apollo program spent quite a bit of time at the crater working out logistics for the lunar landings. There are artifacts and information from the Apollo program at the site as well. At the bottom of the crater, there was a mockup of an astronaut planting the USA flag. From out postion at the top of the crater, this couldn't been seen with the naked eye, it required using one of the provided telescopes. That crater was big! 


On the road leading out of the crater site, we noticed a group of rusted old cars way out in the desert. We stopped and took a hike to investigate. Interestingly, they were at the intersection of two dirt roads. It's almost as if an accident happened 80 years ago and they just left the vehicles there. After pondering how the site came to be, we made our way back to the car and got back on the road. 

As we sailed on towards Tucson, we enjoyed more of the beautiful painted deserts and road side attractions. 

Late in the day, we arrived in Tucson, and picked up Mom from the airport. It's not often we travel 2935 miles to pick someone up from the airport. I don't think we would want to do this on a daily basis.

Tomorrow we visit the Pima air museum and the aircraft boneyards. The boneyard is the reason we travelled off of the direct path to Fremont. Oliver has been wanted to visited the boneyard for a few years now. Tomorrow the day will arrive. 








Arrived at the gates of Mordor!


2 comments:

  1. Hi Oliver this is Grace your Cousin. It looks like you guys are having a lot of fun. Your blog is really cool and I look forward to reading the blog daily!

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  2. Hi this is Anna your cousin. As Grace said it looks like you are having a lot of fun and I like your blog. I will try to read it as much as I can. P.S our family might go to Idaho and go to Silverwood theme park. I hope you are having fun!

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