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Petrified Trees

The Petrified Forest National Park is located in Arizona. It has lost of petroglyphs and pictographs dating back to a thousand years ago. The park is also covered with fallen trees that are as hard as rocks. These trees fell and were washed away about 225 million years ago! The park also has a whole museum full of early dinosaur fossils!

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Isn’t it Grand?

The Grand Canyon in Arizona is one of the true natural wonders of the world. It makes up most of the Grand Canyon National Park and millions of tourists visit it every year.

The Grand Canyon is over 320 km long and up to 6 km deep. The top and the bottom of the canyon have very different weather and vegetation. In fact, going from the top to the bottom is somewhat like going from Canada to Mexico.

There are signs that people lived in the Grand Canyon 4,000 years ago.

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Old Faithful

The Yellowstone National Park is the first and the oldest national park in the United States of America. It’s famous for its geysers and hot springs. The most famous geyser is called ‘Old Faithful’ because it’s one of the few geysers that shoots regularly-once every 75 minutes. It shoots hot water and steam up to.

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Amazing Caves

If you were a pirate two hundred years ago, you’d need a good place to hide your stolen treasure. Some people say that the best hiding place in the world is the Mammoth Cave National Park. It’s a huge underground cave maze. Many of the caves are still unexplored!

Fantastic Trees

The Redwood National Park in California is home to the oldest trees in the world. One of them, called General Sherman, is more than 3,000 years old. It’s about 84 m tall.

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The Saguaro National Park in Arizona is the only place in the United States where you can find the magnificent saguaro cactus. It’s one of the slowest-growing plants - it takes seventy-five years before it even grows its first branch!

Death Valley

Going to Death Valley once meant danger and even death. It’s the hottest place in the United States and summer temperatures there can reach 54 degrees C.! Today, Death Valley is a national park and thousands of people drive there (in air-conditioned comfort, of course) to enjoy the beauty of this strange land.

There are lost of ghost towns in Death Valley. In the 1800s people streamed to Death Valley looking for gold and silver. The terrible heat combined with hard work made people leave the towns. Today, you can visit these eerie ghost towns and look inside old houses, prisons and banks to see how people lived back then.

Back to the Ice Age

In Alaska’s Glacier Bay National Park it’s easy to imagine what our planet looked like at the end of the Ice Age. There’re lost of glaciers there-and they are still moving! But if you’re good at canoeing or rafting, you’ll have nothing to worry about!

From: Speak Out/3, 2006

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3. Fill in the words from the list, then make sentences using the

4. Fill in the correct words from the list.

Imagine, eerie, old houses, pirate, treasure, canyon, clams, squids, crabs, thousand.

1.In Alaska’s Glacier Bay National Park it’s easy to … what our planet looked like at the end of the Ice Age.

2.Today, you can visit these …ghost towns and look inside …, prisons and banks to see how people lived back then.

3.If you were a … two hundred years ago, you’d need a good place to hide your stolen … .

4.The top and the bottom of the … have very different weather and vegetation.

5.These …, …and … are actually over 60 million years old.

6.The Anasazi Indians, who lived there over a ……years ago, built many houses, both underground and on the tops of the cliffs.

5. In small groups, briefly discuss these statements and choose someone to report the group’s opinions and answers to the class.

1. UFOs, aliens, and secret governments do exist, but the Government and the scientists keep this information secret.

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2. There are always rumours about UFOs, aliens, and secret governments but nobody’s seen them.

6. What do you think Area 51 is? Describe the pictures 71 – 78. Use the words from the box.

Secrecy; strict security; conspiracy; military air traffic; radar stations; motion sensors; helicopters; warning sign; crashed alien spacecraft; dead or alive; rumours; time travel experiments; secret governments.

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Pic. 72

Pic. 73

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7. Read the sentences. Do you think they are true? Read the text and check your answers.

1.Area 51 is a nickname for a military base that is located in the western United States.

2.The area is permanently off-limits both to civilian and normal military air traffic.

3.Its secretive nature and undoubted connection to classified aircraft research, together with reports of unusual phenomena, have led Area 51 to become a focus of modern UFO and conspiracy theories.

4.Some of the activities mentioned in such theories at Area 51 include:

The storage, examination, and reverse engineering of crashed alien spacecraft, the study of their occupants (living and dead), and the manufacture of aircraft based on alien technology.

Meetings with extraterrestrials.

The development of exotic energy weapons or means of weather control.

The development of time travel and teleportation technology.

5. A lot of people have claimed knowledge of events supporting Area 51 conspiracy theories.

Area 51

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In the southwestern portion of Lincoln County in southern Nevada lies a stretch of land known as Area 51. It is located on the edge of a large dry salt flat referred to as Groom Lake. Within Area 51 is a United States Air Force top-secret military testing and development base. Its official name is Air Force Flight Test Centre Detachment 3 (AFFTC Det. 3), but it is also sometimes known as Dreamland, the Ranch, Paradise Ranch, or the Box.

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It is believed that the airfield is used to analyse enemy aircraft and weapons systems as well as to secretly develop and test new military aircraft. There are Janet flights that shuttle workers to Area 51 from a high security terminal at the Las Vegas McCarran Airport.

The secrecy and strict security that surrounds Area 51 is what makes so many people, especially conspiracy theorists, wonder exactly what goes on there.

History

Groom Lake was used during World War II for bombing and artillery practice. However, that ceased in 1955 when Lockheed Martin's Advanced Development Programs decided it would be a good location to test the U-2 spy plane.

The base expanded over the years and it was used as the testing ground for other Black Projects (classified military/defence projects that are unacknowledged by the government, military personnel, and defence contractors that work on them) such as the A-12 Blackbird, the F-117 Stealth Fighter, and the B-2 Stealth Bomber.

Today

The government declassified the existence of Area 51 in 1997. That means, they finally admitted that the area did exist. However, the area that surrounds Groom Lake remains off limits to both civilians and normal military air traffic. There are radar stations, buried motion sensors, and HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopters in the area that that notice unauthorized personnel trying to enter the area.

Anyone that visits Area 51 is met with a warning sign that reminds him or her “photography is prohibited” in large letters. People who have been caught aiming cameras at the base have been detained afterwards. In smaller letters on the sign, it says that use of lethal force to those disobeying the sign is authorized. Security guards, armed with M16s, routinely patrol the perimeters of the area. There are no reports of visitors failing to halt being shot, but there is a $650 fine that is usually imposed. Several curious reporters have found themselves receiving follow-up visits from FBI agents after trying to sneak onto Area 51. Even military pilots risk receiving disciplinary action if they stray into the airspace surrounding Groom Lake.

UFOs, a New World Order, and the Moon Landing

Part of the mystery that surrounds Area 51 has to do with unidentified flying objects or UFOs. This is due in part to the fact that the aircraft research there is so secretive and there have been reports of unusual

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