GRAND CANYON

Crossing this out in my bucket list.  The 4 hour drive from vegas was all worth it.

One of earth's most powerful, inspiring landscapes-overwhelms our senses, Its story tells of geological processes played out over unimaginable time spans as a unique combination of size, color and dazzling erosional forms: 277 river miles long, up to 18 miles wide and a mile deep.  Its rugged landscape hosts a fascinating variety of plant and animal communities, from the desert next to the Colorado River deep in the canyon to montane forests atop its north Rim.




DEEP TIME, CHANGING LANDSCAPES
grand Canyon reveals a beautiful sequence of rock layers that serves as windows into time.  The carving of the canyon is only the most recent chapter, a geological blink of an eye, in along story.  That long story includes rock nearly two billion years old in the bottom of the canyon, land masses colliding and drifting apart, mountains forming and eroding away, sea levels rising and falling, and relentless forces of moving water   Several factors make Grand Canyon's geology remarkable.  Many canyons form as rivers cascade among mountains peaks, but Grand Canyon sits incised into an elevated plateau. The desert landscape exposes the geology to views.  It is not hidden under a cloak of vegetation.  the strata revealed preserve a lengthy, although incomplete, records of Earth's history.