As well as impressive volcanic remains we saw Meteor Crater, a couple of hours away by car. It's so large as to be difficult to photograph without a wide angle lens (or an aeroplane). The far rim is a mile away, and the bounding cliffs are many hundreds of feet high. The absence of features such as buildings or trees to give scale to the panorama makes it hard to take in the sheer size of this enormous hole.
The crater comes as a surprise after miles of relatively flat, featureless desert. In profile the rim of ejected material appears as an unremarkable low hump in the arid landscape. Out there too scale is hard to judge. Even in the parking area just beyond the rim, there is no impression of anything remarkable at hand. It's only when one has paid for admission, ascended a flight of stairs and walked through a visitor centre that this staggering panorama opens up. The view from the hot, breezy rim is memorable. No wonder it has intrigued so many people through history. It still does: the rancher who bought the land made a canny investment for his descendants.
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