Odessa Meteor Crater

N 31° 45.422 W 102° 28.675

 

My wife and I decided to finally visit the Odessa Meteor Crater Museum after living in Midland, TX for over a year. It is one of those things people bring up from time to time in conversation, but it is just far enough away to never make it to the top of your To Do list. As a Geologist however, it is a very interesting place to visit even if there isn’t much to see at the surface.


Entrance to the Odessa Meteor Crater Museum

We drove about 20 miles west of Midland to Exit 108 on Interstate 20. There is a brown State Historical sign that directs you off the Interstate, then you drive down what seems to be an oilfield road for a few miles to a nice green tin-roofed museum and visitor center. It was very breezy and cool so we elected to tour the museum first. There are a husband and wife couple that live on the site and run the museum, they were very nice and very eager to discuss the crater with us. We took out time looking at the exhibits which feature many meteorites (and meteorwrongs) from around the world as well as news clippings, photos, models, and movie posters. There is a small seating area with a TV where documentaries on meteorites play on rotation as well.

Do Not Pick Up!

There is a show on Science Channel I believe called Meteorite Men in which two rock hounds travel around the world looking for pieces of meteorites. They apparently recently visited the crater and found some of the newest specimens in a caliche oil field road. These are on display in a cabinet made especially for the show. Having seen a few episodes I thought that was pretty neat. One last note about the museum is that the facilities were very clean, and I attribute that to the fact that this is their home as well as their business. There is no entry fee but donations are greatly appreciated.



Meteorite Men Display Case

Lastly, we took a short hike through the crater itself. There is a self guided trail from the covered picnic areas that takes you down and across the main crater and around the western rim. All told this is only about a quarter mile mostly flat walk. There is only 15 ft of relief from the rim to the center of the crater. There is a cross section of the rock layers, the fenced off site of the original exploration shaft, and signs about the excavations and rock types. I would recommend allocating yourself two hours to fully enjoy everything Odessa Meteor Crater Museum has to offer. What this visit has done more than anything is increase my desire to travel to Arizona and see the large Meteor Crater which is believed to be the same age as this little cousin in West Texas.



Me at the original exploration shaft entrance



I still have three posts from last Fall to make, one will cover our family vacation to Gatlinburg, TN, one is a product review for our new waterproof camera, and lastly our trip home to Alabama for Christmas. Stay tuned.

Just a short walk on the rim

Guadalupe Mountains: Permian Basin Geology Field Course

I spent last week in the Guadalupe Mountains around Carlsbad, NM with a group of co-workers ranging in expertise from Geologists to Engineers. The purpose of our trip was to better understand the geology of the Permian Basin as it applies to oil and gas production in the subsurface. Since I have gone fairly in depth in the past on this area when my wife and I came over to the more touristy areas like Carlsbad Caverns I will make this post a photo journal of our trip instead of a long exposition.

Looking at gypsum and dolomite varves in the Castile Formation.

Creative graffiti on this piece of Permian age reef

Excellent exposure of Crinoid stem fossils

Exposed gastropod, not sure of the species

Hiding from the recent flash floods, see the mudline?

We found this guy hiding from the heat in a small grotto

View to the west from the Escarpment. To the left you can see part of the Brokeoff Moutains

Another view to the West from a small side canyon

A Horny Toad! He just flattened out and refused to move.

You have no idea how much the wind was blowing. See the rain coming in from the north behind me?

A Huge barrel cactus colony!

A view from the highway of the hills near Van Horn, TX. All this land is owned by the owner of Amazon.com

The Chinese Hat (previously know as The Breast of Venus). Every time I go to Carlsbad I want to touch this thing...

Maybe one day when I'm a Big Boy I can be a Park Ranger

Checkin' what's under the skirt in White City

Excellent fossil reef exposure near White City, in the middle of the picture... a Neptunian Dike. Make your own joke.

View of the Shadduck Escarpment from Dog Canyon Camp Ground in the north side of Guadalupe NP.

Sunset over the Indian Basin

Fantastic road cut of the Castile gypsum between Carlsbad, NM and Pine Springs, TX

My favorite picture of Capitan Reef. Taken from a rest area south of the park.

Most of our geology group, wearing our stylish safety vests.

New Blog!

I have tried writing blogs before but I always seem to lose interest after a few entries. I'm not sure exactly why that is, I mean, I love the trips we take. Also, we have a lot of family (RE: all our family) out of town that would love to see what we do in our free time. I guess I just enjoy being in the moment more than recounting those moments. Take for example the cruise we took in 2007, the footage is still on our camcorder despite my best attempts to make it into a DVD. But this isn't a very good introduction to a blog is it? Let me start over...

My name is John and my wife, Stephanie, and I have been living in Midland, TX since the beginning of this year (2011). I am a Geologist in the Oil Industry, and was relocated here after five years in Lafayette, Louisiana. We are both from Tuscaloosa, Alabama and have lived in all of the previously mentioned states, plus Colorful Colorado (Fort Collins, oh how we miss it).

I have a few hobbies (my wife would say a few too many) that occupy my free time. The first of which is Geocaching. Geocaching is an outdoor adventure game that uses GPS receivers to find items hidden by other 'cachers' all over the world. There are millions of these 'caches' all over the place. My handle on http://www.geocaching.com is ZSandmann and since June of 2005 I have found over 4,200 caches in many states plus The US Virgin Islands.

My second hobby, and the one my wife actually enjoys, is visiting National Parks. I need to sit down and calculate how many we have been too, but I can guess at 30+ with pretty good confidence. There are over 392 units in the National Park Service currently. We love these treasures of our country, whether it is the active geology of Yellowstone, the temperate vistas of the Smokey Mountains, or a single Cold War era nuclear bunker like Minuteman Missile. Combine this with geocaching and there are bound to be some adventures. I've created this blog just in time for a planned Easter excursion to Guadalupe Mountains and Carlsbad Caverns National Parks this weekend. So stay tuned.