Week 24: Natural Wonders

Oh, how wonderful the world is! I would just love to discover for myself all of the natural wonders that it has to offer! However, as my travel money is quite short as of this year, I will have to make do with searching for descriptive texts of well-known places online (that I will hopefully get to see with my own eyes in the future).

Here is a descriptive text about the Grand Canyon, retrieved from: http://enjeloverything.blogspot.com/2010/06/grand-canyon-canyon-is-exceptionally.html

I will underline and bold the expressions the expressions used to describe it.
Next, I am going to add a few sentences of my own that could improve the text:

• The crimson orange and yellow colours swirl on the irreguar, immense walls of rock.
• The Grand canyon stretches a whopping 443 kilometres long and can encompass up to 29 kilometres of width.
• The flora and fauna found in this unpopulated sight vary from evergreens and desert plants, as well as rabbits, snakes, and even a couple of lone coyotes.

Grand Canyon

         Grand Canyon is an exceptionally deep, steep-walled canyon in north-western Arizona, United States. Formed by the eroding action of the Colorado River, the Grand Canyon is about 443 km (227 mi) long, 8 to 29 km (5 to 18 mi) wide, and more than 1.6 km (1 mi) deep. The entire canyon is extremely beautiful, containing towering buttes, mesas and valleys within main gorge. A spectacular section of the canyon, together with plateau areas on either side, is preserved as the Grand Canyon national Park, which receives about 4 million visitors a year.

        The Grand Canyon stretches 349 km (217 mi) across the state’s Colorado Plateau and averages 16 km (10 mi) in width. Beautiful rock formations of layered limestone, sandstone, shale and other rock rise from the canyon floor, which is more than 1.6 km (1 mi) deep. This formation is known as “The Alligator”. The Grand Canyon cuts steeply through an arid plateau region that lies between about 1.525 and 2.745 m (5,000 and 9,000 ft) above sea level. This region, although lacking year-round streams in recent years, is sharply eroded, showing such characteristic forms as buttes; it is interspersed with old lava flows, hills composed of volcanic debris and intrusions of igneous rock. The plateau area has a general downward slope to the south-west and in its upper reaches is sparsely covered with such evergreens as juniper and pinon. Parts of the valley consist principally of such desert plants as agaves and Spanish bayonet. In general the entire canyon area has little soil. The climate of the plateau region above the canyon is severe, with extremes of both heat and cold. The canyon floor also becomes extremely hot in summer, sometimes reaching 46° C (115° F), but seldom experiences frost in the summer.

        The Grand Canyon has been sculpted in general by the downward cutting of the Colorado River, which flows the canyon’s lowest portions. Other factors have also played a part. The Kaibab Plateau, which forms the northern rim of the canyon, is about 365 m (1,200 ft) higher than the Coconino Plateau, which forms the southern rim. Water from the northern side has flowed into the canyon, forming tributary valleys, while the streams of the southern plateau flow away in a southerly direction without carving valleys in the canyon walls.

Last but not least, this week, to improve my English I have watched Miss Congeniality with two of my closest classmates. We decided to meet up on Friday and watch a movie in English, because that is what us philologists do, don't we? Anyway, we had a wonderful time and enjoyed the vocabulary in the comedy protagonised by Sandra Bullock.