Dams and Desert and Holes

While traveling through the desert from Las Vegas, I headed past Lake Mead and the Hoover Dam. I took only a couple of pics. One to show a bit of the construction on the new bridge and the other to show how much the lake has dropped due to the drought that has been ongoing for some time. On the left is the progress made so far on the new bridge which will be part of a new freeway through the area. No more snaking through the mountains. On the right is Lake Mead, the white areas on the hillsides show the pre-drought level of the lake.





After leaving that area, I traveled for many miles through the desert as we all might imagine it to be: sand, rock, cacti and dry... very dry. Which prompted me to take out a bottle of water and open it in my lap. That's when I realized just how thin the plastic of the new bottles are. They squeeze too easily when you place the bottles between your thighs to so you can twist off the cap while driving. As the cap twists loose, water is forced out and into your lap. Thus, it becomes unlikely that you will be stopping anytime soon unless you can ignore the stares of others regarding that damp spot in your crotch area. I drove on...

After a couple of hours, I began climbing into the mountains and greener pastures. The high country of Arizona is quite beautiful. I have only been through the mountains in Arizona in the Summer and Spring. I understand the winters are not harsh, though. I get this from my brother-in-law who lives north of Phoenix, above Sedona. I am not so sure, I have been in the high desert in Winter and the wind cuts right through you.

As I moved down into the high desert from the Flagstaff area, I came to the turnoff for one of the places I wanted to see on the way back. Meteor Crater is truly in the middle of nowhere. It is a 6 miles south of I-40 and surrounded by terrain that is the definition of "empty." It is what I imagine the Gobi Desert looks like.

It is flat, it is desolate, it is sun baked. It seemed to be a large flat area surrounded by mountain peaks far in the distance.

Let me give you a little rundown on Meteor Crater.... About 50,000 years ago, a chunk of iron-nickel estimated to have weighed several hundred thousand tons crashed into the plains. It created this huge crater that sits in the high desert in northern Arizona. I happen to think it did much, much more than that. For instance, did you know that this is about the time that humans began to travel out of Africa into the rest of the world? I don't say there is a direct link between these two events, I just note that they happened around the same time. I wondered if the flat land surrounding the crater in all directions was always like that or was another result of the impact. I wondered what the environment was like before the impact.


The crater itself, looking across the 4000 foot diameter and down into the 550 foot depth (originally 700 feet)










Looking north from the crater back toward I-40.












Looking west from the same spot as above.




So far as we know, no human beings existed outside of Africa at the time. The area was known to be cooler and damper with vegetation and forests, populated by woolly mammoths and other creatures of the Pleistocene era. What impact did the meteorite's impact have on that?

I am paralyzed by the power of my curiosity. That is, I want to learn everything and there is not enough time, not enough resources, not enough me to do it.

Here are some links for the curious to peruse...

Hoover Dam Bridge Construction
Hoover Dam Information
Meteor Crater, AZ
More about Meteor Crater
Human History


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