A star fell on Alabama

Wetumpka, Alabama sits right on the bull's eye of the greatest natural disaster in Alabama's history. The hills just east of downtown are the eroded remains of a five-mile-wide impact crater that was blasted into the bedrock and is Alabama's only geo-site.

The mighty blast occurred near the end of the Age of Dinosaurs, about 85 million years ago. All around the semi-circular pattern of hills that make up the remaining rim of the crater, the hard rocks of the Piedmont are bent sharply and point away from the center of the impact. The normally horizontal layers of more recent surface rocks are mixed in and around the crater suggesting an incredible explosion that would have destroyed all life in a radius of many miles.

Computer studies indicate a fast-traveling projectile will create a crater with a diameter approximately twenty-five times it size. Since the Wetumpka Crater is 5 miles wide, the meteor that caused it most probably was 1,000 feet in diameter. Its velocity is calculated to have been in the neighborhood of 40,000 miles per hour. Scientists estimate that the energy released by the Wetumpka impact event was over 175,000 times the energy of the nuclear bomb detonated at Hiroshima, Japan in 1945.

Each of the geo-sites that we look at has published geo-coordinates that we put into our car GPS system. That is usually enough to get us pretty close. Also, there is usually at least one picture in Dickas' book, "101 American Geo-Sites you've gotta see", that we try to match with Mr. Spock added.   For this site, Dickas had said that the suburbs of Wetumpka were built over the impact site and that there were very few places where this feature can be observed. But we had a picture from the book which showed the edge of  parking lot and the front bumpers of some cars. As were looking for the exact picture site we encountered the Wetumpka Fire Department so we showed these three cute guys the picture and they knew exactly where it was - behind the bank building - and showed us how to get there. Half the fun of visiting these geo-sites is meeting and talking with local residents and these men were fun to talk with.

Mr. Spock observing the bent rock from the force of the meteor impact. 

This picture almost exactly replicates the one in the book - but with Mr. Spock.

This evening we are outside of Nashville in Franklin, Tennessee. This TownePlace Suites hotel just opened last Thursday. We are the first to stay in our room and all the dishes are wrapped in cellophane. The halls have a slight smell of fresh paint. It's kinda exciting to be the first!