big, very deep hole in the ground in the middle of the desert.

Big hole in the ground. I wondered what the local natives thought about it all those thousands of years ago.
The ones that weren't killed by it.

The first humans arrived around 15,000 years ago, so I expect they just admired it the same way you did.

edited to adjust creation date

strangely, the one thing I most remember is that we saw a bush along the trail that was swarming with ladybugs. Tried to take a picture, but without stereoview, it's hard to tell what's going on.

From the highway though, now that I that I think about it.

You don't really appreciate it until yo you look through one of their telescope thingies and find the astronaut at the bottom. This thing is huge! Also cheap and very cool.

I was impressed by the fact that, despite the big hole in the ground, no really large fragments had ever been found; the biggest was downright disappointing



The official grownup explanation was that the actual meteor hadn't been all that big (maybe 150 feet in diameter) and it mostly vaporized on contact. I could believe "mostly vaporized on contact" because everybody said they'd looked for fragments and hadn't found much -- though the small meteor size guess compared to the big crater surprised me

...traveling at cosmic speeds, less deceleration from atmospheric drag, and it all has to be converted to something instantaneously. That something is heat. All that heat dissipating in a matter of seconds would move a lot of dirt...

It was amazing.

... on a coast-to-coast trip. I was just idly looking out the window at the road-way and landscape when it loomed into view. Pretty impressive.