For many years I have held a firm opinion that two of the very best forms of education come from reading and travel. The last few years in my work as a school counselor I have shared this opinion with every Middle School student I have had the opportunity to influence, telling them that even if they do not have the chance to travel right now, their mind is free to do so through reading, and our local Middle School library is a treasure just waiting to be mined.

For the past several years our daughter has worked outside the country. This, our love of travel, and the fact that her and our son in law have given us two grandsons are all the incentive Pam and I need, to get out of town every chance we get.

Most recently they have lived in Juarez, Mexico, just across the border from El Paso, so for this trip, Juarez served as our base of operations. Even though Juarez does not have a reputation as a great destination, people there are welcoming and friendly, and the food is amazing, which is reason enough for me to be a frequent visitor.

On this two-week visit we decided to take advantage of our daughter’s current location and see a little of the American Southwest that heretofore we had only read about. So we rented a car and took a whirlwind tour. We headed west from El Paso into New Mexico, passing through Las Cruces, a surprisingly verdant little town in the valley before turning north toward Albuquerque. We found ourselves climbing steadily through a rocky, mountainous, and desert-like country. Once we reached Albuquerque we turned west toward Flagstaff, Arizona. When we left El Paso the only agenda we had was to spend three nights in Las Vegas, Nevada so we were open to taking detours along the way if something looked interesting. Much to our delight we found several interesting places. The first two were in Northern Arizona; The Painted Desert and The Petrified Forest. We had heard of these places but had only a vague idea what they were. When we happened on them, we were pleased to find that a very good way to see them is to take a driving tour of 28 miles with scenic stops all along the way. You can get out of the car and within a few steps be treated to some amazing sights. Our timing was perfect, as it was getting late in the day and the late evening sun really brought out the amazing colors of the Painted Desert. It was amazingly beautiful and aptly named. The same road tour continued through the Petrified Forest, which I now know consists of thousands of large, downed, ancient trees, preserved for our viewing by an apparent cataclysmic volcanic eruption. The trees were coated and preserved by volcanic ash encapsulating and preserving them for us to see thousands (some say millions) of years later.

After this we planned to drive on into Flagstaff, but before we got there we found another surprise, Meteor Crater, Arizona! That’s right, Meteor Crater. When I see an Interstate exit by that name I have to at least see how far off the beaten path it is. What we found, just a few miles off I-40 in Northern Arizona was, you guessed it, a meteor crater, deep enough that if the Washington Monument were sitting on the bottom, the top would be roughly level with the surface and that is 555 feet! The floor of the crater is large enough to contain 20 football fields, and if the walls of the crater were lined with stadium seating, 20 million people could be seated! The perimeter of the crater is over a mile across from rim to rim.

That is all I have space to write about this week, so next week Wally and Pam do Vegas! Don’t get too excited, it is Wally and Pam.