Barringer Meteor Crater

 100 Places To See (and take a selfie) Before You Die:

Berringer Meteor Crater

Winslow, Arizona

I haven't done one of these '100 Places' posts in a while. The Berringer Meteor Crater is located about a half hour east of Flagstaff. The nearest town is Winslow, but there's no reason to stay there so hit this one as a stop if heading across I40 (Route 66) or as a day trip out of Flagstaff. 

It's kind of out in the middle of nowhere, but easy to get to and a pleasant drive as well. In the picture above you can see the visitors center and parking lot. It's a nice setup and they have a neat shop as well. In spite of efforts to designate this a public landmark, it remains privately owned. It feels like a landmark site though. 

I've been here at least once as a youngster, but we decided to visit with our daughter in 2018 while in Flagstaff. We had a great time, but didn't really get the usual experience...

Good night rental car.

Good morning rental car.

We went to bed in sunny and 70's weather and woke up to a snowstorm. This was thrilling to Samantha (and kind of fun for us as well), but not great for a roadtrip. We headed out to the crater anyway.

We decided to make the most of it and actually had a great time. You couldn't see the crater bottom at all and certainly not the opposite rim, but it was still fun.  

The visitors center has enough interesting exhibits and things to do to make it worth spending some time in there. 

This background for a photo op shows what it would be like if we could have hiked down in to the crater.

Like I said - snowball fight. We had fun and pretty much had the place to ourselves. I think this is a great stop if you're in the area. I wouldn't plan a trip around it, but Flagstaff is an underrated city to visit and on this one week trip we hit the crater, the Grand Canyon, and the Hoover Dam (and Vegas, but I could do without that). 

The Berringer Meteor Crater is a very low-key stop that you could do in an hour, or take a little longer and do a guided rim tour. You can't hike down into the crater, but you don't need to. The drive to the crater from I40 is pleasant and short as well.