Sample Travel Journal Posting

My seven-year old granddaughter and I visited Sugar Loaf Mountain in Rio de Janeiro. The mountain does in fact resemble a sugarloaf, I suppose, but she had no clue and neither did I, really. Nevertheless, it was a very large igneous plug which I explained was an intrusive. By its light color and rather coarse texture I knew it should be called “granite”. The color was due to its silica content, light colored igneous rocks are called felsic rocks due to the quartz content, and it was coarse grained because it had cooled slowly underground. It now is exposed; the material into which it had been intruded has been eroded away. If it had cooled on the surface, I told her it would be fine grained and would be called rhyolite. She’s a pretty sharp kid (she’s my granddaughter) and understood everything perfectly.