Room+14B

=Grand Canyon Project = = =

[[image:102_0895.JPG width="194" height="156" align="right"]]
 The Grand Canyon is a magnificent place as far as the eye can see. Mountains tall and glorious from the millions of years that the mountain has been eroding. Many years it took for the Grand Canyon to form the many layers, but the three most common are limestone, sediment, and sandstone. We observed this magnificent site while hiking on the South Kaibab Trail. While we were on this trail our guide Ken Waters gave our group many interesting facts here are a few. The mountain has been eroding for millions of years 40,000- 50,000 feet of Sediment have been made in the last 20-30 million years, but it has taking around 200,000 million years to for all the sediment layers to erode. If you every come to the grand canyon and take the trail I took then when you enter and go around 100 feet down and look up you’ll find a V shaped figure in the path and in the center of the V there will be tons of crumbled rock because there was a strike-slip fault were the V toke place. Also, if you go down that trail around 50 feet and look at the wall next to you will find some rocks that look out of the ordinary (look at picture next to left) these use to be sponges in the ocean because the canyon use to be part of a sea and after the millions of years and the sea went back to shore the sponges died and became very hard. So, hard in fact that the Indians in the canyon used them as their weapons. There were many cliffs and slopes in the canyon the reason behind that is that Limestone makes the cliffs and shale makes the slopes**.** The Grand Canyon was a magnificent place and if you every come to Arizona then I would recommend that one of your stops is the Grand Canyon.

[[image:Canyon_Trip_165.JPG width="276" height="328" align="right"]]Wupatki National Monument
====Another place me and my classes visited was Wupatki National Monument. Wupatki stands for house cut up in Spanish which you’ll get why later. Wupatki is another magnificent place, when you head down the trail you’ll see many houses that are in shambles our cut up, but are still awesome to look at. These pueblos date back around 900 hundred years ago these are the ruins of the Wupatki people. This place was a popular trade route for many cultures. Because, so many people came to trade or live people there are many different cultural items there from all the many different locations people came from. Signs show though that a huge portion of the there valuables were left behind, scientist think that why there items were left behind is because the more items the Wupatki people gathered the more they grew from there faith. Which is why the elders chose to move to a new location so that the people could start over and grow closer to there faith. When you go farther down the trail and look to the right you’ll find a huge circle which was used for town meetings or rituals. What makes this circle spectacular is that it is positions that if someone spoke in a normal voice it could be heard within around 75 feet. The Wupatki National Monument has many wonder in it and is an amazing place another cool part about it is that is around a 15 minute drive to Sunset Crater. ====

 Colorado river fault lines =__**Colorado river**__ = ==On our Grand Caynon trip we went down the Colorado river. Our guide showed us the layer of rock that contains fossils from the jursasic period.We also saw fish (rainbow trout) swiming in the river. We saw fault lines like the ones pictured above. When the rocks build up pressure and then release it, it creates an earthquake. When all that pressure releases it also creates friction which melts rock creating shiny rock. Along the way we saw some drawings. Turns out they are very old Indian drawings. My favorite part of the Grand Caynon river trip was the part where I got soaked. ==



**__Sunset crater__**
 Sunset Crater

===The last stop on our trip was Sunset Crater. By the time we reached our final destination, we had a lot of tired campers. While at the Crater, we saw old lava flows and 4 diffrent types of volcanoes. Sunset Crater is 1,000 feet tall. Sunset Crater Volcano was born in a series of eruptions sometime between 1040 and 1100 AD. What was really interesting to me is the pebbles and how fine they are. They got in my socks. Once they tried to film a movie at Sunset Cater but a person was killed in the making of the movie. Also there are trees that smell really good. They are called 'Buttersctoch Trees.' Our guide says when there is wind, the whole forest smells like butterscotch. We saw lava tubes which are sacred to the native people. They would put insence into the tube. Also we saw a lava groto. My favorite part of the site is the cinders that made the volcano. At the site we hiked the lava flow trail. ===