Our route towards Arizona from Alamogordo briefly took us north and back into the Wild West of Lincoln County where we had previously explored Billy the Kid’s stomping ground. There was another ghost town just off the highway by the name of White Oaks, so we swung by for a look. This was once a proper old west farming community, until a seam of pure gold was discovered in the hills and it exploded into a hotbed of activity. With a thriving mining community came an equally thriving entertainment scene. Billy the kid thought of White Oaks as a holiday resort due to the concentration of brothels and casinos. But the gold eventually ran out, and the town withered and died. Today you can wander the streets and peer inside the remaining buildings. There are even a few businesses still operating in the town. There is an antique mercantile of sorts in the historic Brown Store, although it was closed on our Sunday visit. Luckily though, the absolutely epic “No Scum Allowed Saloon” just opened its doors as we were about to head out of town. So, of course, we popped in for a beer. Well, I had a beer, not the kids. That would just be irresponsible. This awesome bar is housed inside an 1884 red brick building, and is decorated in a proper ramshackle spit-and-sawdust livery. It has even been placed in the top ten “Best Cowboy Bars In The West” by American Cowboy magazine. We hung out for half an hour, chatting with the Vietnam Vet barkeep and fellow non-scum punters about places we had been, and places we were heading. They told us to look out for a place called the Very Large Array on our drive west. Sounded interesting, so off we headed.

After a quick pit stop at El Camino family restaurant in Socorro, we called in to have a peek at the Carrizozo Malpais lava field in the aptly named Valley of Fires. We didn’t have time to explore this huge lava flow unfortunately, we had a long drive to make. Eventually, we found our way to the Very Large Array. And it certainly is very large. It is a group of 28 huge radio dishes, measuring 25m each in diameter, arranged in a giant Y-shape on the Plains Of San Agustin. They operate in unison to effectively create one enormous telescope many miles across. They are also all arranged on railway tracks so that the size and density of the array can be varied depending on which intergalactic object they are currently spying on. Pretty cool, and quite an arresting site from the highway. We stopped to take a few pictures, and I narrowly avoided stepping on what I thought was a rattlesnake who was casually relaxing on the warm asphalt. Luckily I saw him make a break for it as I approached, and I managed to grab a quick picture before he disappeared under the railway track. Turns out he wasn’t a rattler but a gopher snake – similar colouring, but minus the rattle and the deadly venom.

After a tactical overnight stop in the tiny halfway point of Pie-Town (yep, you guessed it, named after pies), we carried on out of New Mexico and over the Arizona state line towards our destination of Meteor Crater. We had been meaning to check out one of the many small town western stores in the hope of finding a bona-fide cowboy hat, and when the Western Drug and General Store loomed in the town of Springerville, we took our chance and pulled over for a look. Jackpot! This was where the locals were shopping for their workwear, and Hunter and I both managed to score a proper Stetson each. The other thing the locals were shopping for here was guns. Lots, and lots of guns. As we stood there, gawping at the sheer amount of firearms on sale in the local general store, the fella behind the counter asked if I’d like to see anything. I politely said I didn’t think I’d make it through customs with one, but he said “Well, why not take some pictures with some anyways!”. He then proceeded to show me the biggest, craziest and weirdest guns he had. They really love their guns here, and he was perfectly happy to tell me how he couldn’t live anywhere they weren’t allowed them. One of the ZZ Top looking, confederate flag toting locals also introduced himself and happily chatted about his addiction to firearms. I mean, these guys were polite and friendly, and genuinely interested in sharing their disdain for anti-gun movements. Americans are generally pretty opinionated people, and they seem perfectly willing to immediately share whatever opinion they have without fear of offending people. Which, to be honest, I find pretty refreshing, even if I don’t share their opinion, I admire their lack of social anxiety. 

Our next stop was the Rainbow Forest, in the southern part of the Petrified Forest National Park. This is home to one of the world’s largest concentrations of beautifully coloured petrified trees – and they are everywhere you look. Whole trees which were once covered by silt and eventually replaced by colourful mineral deposits, now litter the surface of this park having been exposed by surface erosion. Their crystallised trunks have slowly but surely been snapped into “logs” by the geological movement of the ground over many millennia, but some have appeared in huge pieces and you are free to get up close and personal with them. Hunter even managed to use his newly acquired UV light to search for seams of fluorescent deposits in the rainbow coloured trunks. 

After ambling through the giant logs and the crystal forest, we also took a drive through the park and around the Blue Mesa Loop to see some of the park’s most stunning badland rock formations. Blue, grey, white, purple and green striated mounds and buttes, perforated with ancient petrified evergreens, undulate through the otherwise fairly flat landscape in this area of the park. 

It is strictly forbidden to collect any examples of the petrified wood from the park, although quite how they enforce that rule is beyond me. It is everywhere you look, and more often than not there is nobody else around. If you were so inclined, you could fill your pockets and nobody would ever know. In a bid to combat the fossil thieves, they do sell the wood in the park shop at the entrance. But there are also local entrepreneurs who once upon a time bought the private land surrounding the park, and actually mine the petrified logs to sell to the public from huge warehouses.

We headed to Holbrook to check out one such establishment. This is where we finally picked up Route 66 to head west. After a late lunch in Mr Maestas family restaurant (the best food in town according to the relic truck billboard), we popped in to Jim Gray’s Petrified Wood Co. It would appear that Jim has mined enough petrified wood to last for several lifetimes, as well as stockpiles of other desert rocks and minerals in his yard.

We were almost at our campsite in Meteor Crater, but made one last stop in the historic town of Winslow to fuel up and grab a picture with the historic Route 66 sign. This small town made famous by the Eagles was once an important stop on the Mother Road, and is now a main stopoff for bikers making the iconic journey. We pulled onto the hard shoulder and quickly dove out to take a quick picture with the sign, and while we were quickly snapping off a few pics, my heart sank as I saw the authorities pull in behind the van. I knew I wasn’t supposed to pull in there, and braced myself for the appropriate telling off. But it wasn’t the fuzz, it was actually the fire chief. And he wasn’t about to give me a ticket, he simply wanted to stop and help us get the perfect picture. After a quick chat, he even offered to escort us into town and show us where to get the best pics of the freight trains, as well as Winslow’s famous “standin’ on a corner” statue. Even though we were on a tight schedule by this point, how could we refuse such a kind offer. He was obviously fiercely proud of his town, and simply wanted to show us the best way to enjoy it ourselves. Chief Hernandez really does, in my opinion, embody what we have found is the greatest part of our trip around America – and that’s the people.

We busied ourselves taking pictures for a few minutes, and just as we were about to leave guess who turned up again? The chief had driven back to the fire department and found a couple of iron-on Winslow FD patches, and driven back to find us and give them to the kids. What a gent, and a true credit to his town.

The following morning we headed out to explore what we had come here to see, the best preserved meteor crater on Earth. Around 60,000 years ago, a 50 meter wide nickel-iron meteorite struck the ground at this location. Travelling at an estimated 26,000mph, the flaming hunk of space metal punched a hole in the desert with the force of 150 nuclear bombs. The explosion turned the ground inside out and created an impact crater a mile wide.

Today this privately owned site sits at the centre of a 360,000 acre ranch, and is home to a visitor centre and museum where you can learn about its history and take a guided tour on the rim of the crater.

The moon like surroundings of the crater were actually used to help train the Apollo astronauts, and are still used by NASA to this day for lunar training and testing of equipment. There is also a movie theatre, 4D ride and gift shop, as well as interactive displays and exhibits including an Apollo Boilerplate Command Module, and the largest surviving fragment of the meteorite itself, weighing in at a hefty 638kg.

Just time to pop back into Winslow for dinner and grab a few more pics before turning in for the night. Pretty cool to see the locals popping down to the ice cream shop on their horses in true cowboy style. The next day we were continuing down the Mother Road towards Arizona’s main attraction, the big old hole in the ground they call the Grand Canyon…