Volcanoes, Asteroids & Galaxies

On this action packed day, we will start our adventure exploring the San Francisco Volcanic Field, which contains over 400 cinder-cone volcanoes, with the most recent eruption taking place nearly 900 years ago! We will have several stops to get out, stretch and take photos.

 

From here we will drive out past Diablo Canyon to Winslow, home of the Eagles song, Take it easy,“…Standing on corner in Winslow Arizona, such a fine site to see…” and have lunch. Once we get back in the SUV, we will drive to Meteor Crater. Meteor Crater is a stunning impact site caused by a meteor roughly the size of a small garage. With a crater of over half-a-mile wide, it is one of the most recent and well preserved impacts from a meteorite that we have on planet Earth. As we make our way back to Flagstaff, hopefully we will see one of our famous sunsets and head to dinner at the famous Galaxy diner on Rt66.

 

For the grand finale we will end our day at the world famous Lowell Observatory for professionally guided star-gazing. Lowell Observatory is famous for many exciting discoveries such as the planet Pluto, the Schumacher levi-9 comets, the Near Earth Asteroid Tracking Program, and many others.  If it is a clear night sky, we may have an opportunity to look through the famous Clark telescope, which discovered Pluto in February 18th, 1930. Depending on the time of the year, we will be able to observe different objects in the night sky, sometimes its planets, other times its nebulae, globular clusters or galaxies. It’s always awe-inspiring!