Monday, July 8 - Falling Stars 

"Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket, never let it fade away

Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket, save it for a rainy day

For love may come and tap you on the shoulder, ...  some starless night,
and if by chance you feel you want to hold her,
you'll have a pocket full of starlight"

This catchy song has been going around in my head for days now since our visit to the Meteor Crater in Arizona.  Wow... talk about the ultimate falling star!   Meteor Crater is a big brown dusty bowl in the middle of nowhere and one of the most interesting things I've seen in awhile.  50,000, yes FIFTY THOUSAND years ago, a meteor zoomed through space, entered our atmosphere and at an amazing speed of 26,000 mile per hour struck the rocky desert plain with an explosive force of more than 20 million tons of dynamite.  The resulting crater is HUGE.  HUGE.. and was created in an instant!
Yet it is not the biggest one on Earth by a long shot.   I was not really expecting to enjoy this stop too much but I was wrong.   It was very interesting to see, the interactive museum was fun and the movie about the event (documentary style) was very informative.  It was a great visit.

A highlight for me was getting to touch this:

 

Its a meteor.  It is largest piece of this meteor found at the site.  It is dense.  It is about a yard long and 20 inches at the widest and it weighs about the same as a volkswagon bug.  HEAVY.    The song popped into my head (my Mom used to sing it all the time) and as the song goes, I wanted to put this not so tiny falling star in my pocket so that I'd always have starlight when I need it, but alas it was too well guarded and my pockets were too small.

Just kidding of course, but really . . . I was able to touch a piece of the falling star that created this amazing and scientifically significant crater... a piece of the raw material that makes up our galaxy.  It really was cool.  Have you ever touched a falling star?

 This is the meteor itself.   It is the best preserved meteor crater in the world and has contributed much of the knowledge about meteors now used to identify hundreds of meteor craters around the world.   There is still a lot of science research going on there.   Once mile across and three miles around... and 550 feet deep.  This crater is privately owned (not by our government, not a state park) by an individual who originally bought the land to get rich from mining the ore.  He, Hollinger, was among the first to verify that it was a meteor strike not a volcanic crater.

So... here I am trying to put this falling star into my pocket so I can save it for a rainy day,

"For when my troubles start a'multiplyn',  

and they just might,

It'll be so easy to forget'em without tryin'

cause
I'll have myself a pocket full of starlight"   

     ~     Perry Como

Please... I know there are two photos this week of me trying to take that are not mine... It's all in fun people... all in fun.   I'm an honest girl really.