Several hundred thousand tons of iron and nickel fell out of the sky. It landed here. One’s eyes get jaded after a while; the landscape around here is so outsized and dramatic to begin with — so it takes a while for it to set in that this isn’t just another dramatic canyon or cliffside. This could’ve happened anywhere. Just a rock. Falling out of the sky.
Meteor Crater
This needs something to set scale =( I can’t tell how big it is.
Yeah… it’s 4,000 feet across, and about 600 feet deep.
You can see some teeny tiny people on the viewing platform to the right; the distortion from the panoramic photo makes it look a lot farther away than it actually is… I’d guess it’s about 1/8th of the way around the rim from where I was standing when I took the photo, and maybe two flights of stairs down; not far at all.
So… pretty damn big. :)