Week Two - Igneous Rocks - Taylor Mills

As someone who hasn't traveled very much, my boyfriend and I thought it would be a good idea to visit Acadia National Park in Maine.  Created more than 500 million years ago, Acadia's landscape was formed by various geological activities such as mountain building, molten magma, and ice sheets and is actually still shaped today by several different forms of erosion.  As a result of said erosion, Acadia's rocks are now exposed.  Fortunately, the rocks' exposure allowed me, with a little help from a park ranger, to explain to my boyfriend that Acadia is abundant with intrusive, or plutonic, igneous rocks since magma crystallized underground instead of at the Earth's surface.  Upon further examination, we couldn't help but notice that the rocks looked a lot like our granite countertops!  From the image I snapped of a mountainous trail in Acadia which depicts the rocks' gray and salmon-ish color and blocky shape(s), you can probably see the resemblance to granite as well.  My thoughts were confirmed by their rather coarse or porphyritic texture because it took a very long time for the magma to solidify and cool which caused the crystallization of different crystal sizes and gave it that granite look.  The ranger then informed us that the color of the rocks is due to their silica content, making them felsic igneous rocks made up of light-colored silicates such as quartz.  I'm glad that my boyfriend and I went on this trip because we had a really great time AND I was able to teach my science-loving guy a thing or two.  Well, I guess the park ranger helped too...

Figure 1. Mountainous Trail in Acadia Composed of Granite (Sheffied, 2018).