Colorado Road Trip Day 14: Meteor Crater

Thursday, August 31, 2017
Trip Odometer: 2653

We decided to take a short walk for breakfast. The Yelp app said there was a good breakfast place just a few blocks away. Along the way, I took a picture of an empty corner, somewhat as a gag: “Standin’ on a corner in Winslow, Arizona…”. But when we came to the next corner, there were statues standin’ in front of a large mural celebrating exactly that song lyric. Apparently I had just picked the wrong corner.

A short drive from Winslow was the Meteor Crater, which Kenna had previously seen but I had not. The admission fee gave us access to not just the crater but to a well-maintained museum dealing with a number of related topics, such as comets, asteroids, and the extinction of the dinosaurs. While the admission fee ($14 each or $12 for seniors) was not insignificant, it was a good value in terms of the work that had gone into presenting the information to us. The view of the crater was impressive as well.

Continuing past Prescott, we stopped in Williams, Arizona for lunch. Williams is the southern terminus of the Grand Canyon Railway, which we have twice previously taken. Williams seems to be thriving from the presence of the railway.

We proceeded to Las Vegas through a couple of rain showers. We decided to take the route on the western side of the Colorado River, through Laughlin. Our room for the night was at the Platinum Hotel, a non-smoking and casino-free hotel on Flamingo that I had stayed at on previous trips for BSides Las Vegas and DEFCON. For a relatively modest price, we had a large suite with a full kitchen.

We took a walk around the nearby portions of The Strip before stopping for a small dinner at Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville restaurant. The restaurant earns its name; our margaritas were tasty but strong.

This article is part of a series about our recent road trip to Colorado and back. To see the introductory article in the series, click here.