Earthwalk Day 1473 (3 February 2026), 14,774 km: Meteor Crater

Meteor Crater, a.k.a. Barringer Crater, is both a meteor impact crater and a weird circle on the map. Actually rather square, as circles go.

The crater is 1.2 km in diameter and 170 m deep. 50,000 years ago a meteorite about 50 m in diameter slammed into our planet here and was mostly vaporized. This impact eventually brought about the creation of a visitor center on the north rim, attracting 270,000 visitors each year.

Meteor Crater is, in my view, perhaps the most spectacular view of the entire EarthWalk. I have yet to see it in real life (I really should get there), but virtual me arrived there today, ending Leg 58. Now I’m 5 km on my way to the next destination, heading east on Crater Ranch Road.

Added 4 Feb 2026: I neglected to give a summary for January. It was not bad. There was only one day in the month I felt the weather and timing conspired to be at all favorable for bicycling, so only one ride, but I’ve never managed more than one ride in January in previous years, sometimes zero, and this year’s ride was longer than any previous. On the strength of that, my average daily distance was higher than any previous January, though not by a lot. Average daily steps? Second place, but they’re all clustered pretty closely.

A map showing my progress is here, a spreadsheet with progress detail is here, and a Google Earth KMZ file is in this Google Drive folder. Present coordinates: 35.037°N, 111.005°W.