Room+14A



__//The Grand Canyon//__

The ﻿Grand Canyon one of the natural wonders of the world filled with sponge fossils. Also it is 277 river miles long. We hiked this natural wonder and learned about the beautiful canyon’s rocks and land formation,learning about﻿ what they are and how they formed. There are three types of sediment in this canyon, limestone, shall, and sandstone. Limestone is the top layer and is filled with sponge fossils. The shall is the middle layer and it’s a soft layer, almost sand like. Lastly the sandstone, sandstone is the like glass, it is very smooth and it is shiny. It was made by an earthquake’s heat and pressure. It takes 20-30 years to make 50-60 thousand feet of sediment. The Grand Canyon is 250 million years old. Indians that lived in the canyon liked to use limestone to make arrowheads because they are so sharp. Also, during Pangia, the super continent 95 percent of all animals died because the continents were spreading apart from each other. Another fact is that faults can occur big or small, which creates slopes, they can form anywhere in the canyon. We think that this location was a beautiful location and we learned a lot about the canyon.



The River Trip We went to the Colorado River in Gland canyon. The walls were up to 1000 feet and most places the water was crystal clear and you could see the bottom. During this trip we were pontoon boating for about two hours. The way to get in was a two mile long tunnel through the canyon filled with 18 addicts. There was consistent concrete on the dam for three years which was enough to build a four was highway from Phoenix to Chicago. The rocks on the wall on the canyon are Navaho sandstone. In the river there are only trout and they can get up to 24 inches long. There was a fault line that was from Lake Powell that turned into a beautiful trickling water fall on the side of the river. The dam almost broke in 1983, there was a lot of flooding that rose the water 20 feet higher that took away a layer of sandstone. A green tree called the tamers tree can drink up to 70 gallons of water a day it came from farmers from the Mediterranean, that took it to California then spread to the canyon, the environmentalist burned down the trees so they don’t drink the water. We think that this was a very pretty sight and people should come see it.



Wupatki

The Wupatki national park is a place where the Hopi Indians used to live 900 years ago. We went through the trail of houses that they built years ago. These amazing houses are four stories tall and have one hundred rooms. Wupatki is native for “long pueblo”. Many different cultures and people pass through the very spot, including the Spaniards and Navajo Indians. Droughts would usually come which made everyone leave the houses. There is a lady who still lives there and is raising sheep. When she dies it will be private property. The people that built the houses did a good job because it’s been up for 900 years. In the house many different cultures lived together. We thought this location was fascinating and we hope that it remains for another 900 more years.

sunst crater Sunset Crater National Monument was a pretty place with cinders on the ground that came from the volcano, and green trees here and there, and one huge volcano. We hiked up the volcano and learned about the trees and looked at the ice cave. The type of volcano is a Cindercone. When the volcano erupts, the ground shakes and it smells like rotten eggs. People used to be able to hike to the top of the mountain, but in 1950 it erupted and now there are loose rocks so they closed it down for research. The people that study volcanos are called Volcanologist. Big volcanoes have little volcanoes inside of them that have unstable tubes. In the 1950’s some people wanted to shoot a movie with the volcano erupting, but people in Flagstaff, Arizona wrote to the President and later they did not shoot the movie. We think that this was very cool, how we walked on burned lava and got to see a real volcano.