Grand Canyon

For the third time since 1996, officials plan to unleash a flood in the Grand Canyon next month in an effort to restore an ecosystem that was altered by a dam constructed decades ago on the Colorado River. The Glen Canyon Dam changed the river from a muddy, unpredictable force of nature into a tightly controlled water-delivery system.

In the elite circles of private schools in Washington, D.C., globe-trotting vacations are common, but it is hard to imagine that many schoolmates of Malia and Sasha Obama will be able to rival their summer adventures. Although the White House zealously guards many of the details of the Obamas' private family time, the public caught a glimpse Sunday of the girls' sightseeing tour of the Grand Canyon, and a day earlier, of their visit to Yellowstone National Park. Earlier this summer, photographers captured visits by the first daughters to the Eiffel Tower and the Pompidou Center in Paris, a slave dungeon in Ghana, and the Kremlin in Moscow.

Get on track for a winter visit to Grand Canyon National Park with a special package that includes train travel, accommodations, meals and a tour. The deal: The Grand Canyon Railway Winter Getaway package is $129 per adult, double occupancy. (It's $50 for kids ages 2 to 10 and $66 for ages 11 to 16.) Participants spend the night at the Grand Canyon Railway Hotel in Williams, Ariz.

The Grand Canyon is about to take a bath, and National Park Service officials who oversee the natural wonder are worried. Federal flood control managers, led by Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, this week plan to unleash millions of cubic feet of water from behind Glen Canyon Dam to "flush" the huge canyon bottom with a simulated springtime flood. Bureau of Reclamation and U.S.

The Grand Canyon is as much as three times as old as geologists had previously believed, at least 17 million years old, researchers reported Friday in the journal Science. Scientists previously believed it to be about 5 million to 6 million years old, but dating it has proved difficult because erosion on the sides of the canyon has destroyed much evidence of its antiquity.

The results of a man-made flood in the Grand Canyon last week were immediate and substantial, adding areas of vital sediment as large as football fields along stretches of the Colorado River, officials said. The three-day flood that ended last Friday was designed to redistribute and add sediment to the 277-mile river in the Grand Canyon, where the ecosystem was forever changed by the construction of dams more than four decades ago.

Thanks to renewed interest in nuclear power, the United States is on the verge of a uranium mining boom, and nowhere is the hurry to stake claims more pronounced than in the districts flanking the Grand Canyon's storied sandstone cliffs. On public lands within five miles of Grand Canyon National Park, there are now more than 1,100 uranium claims, compared with just 10 in January 2003, according to data from the Department of the Interior.

Oui, oui, it's free If you're in Paris this month, it won't cost a cent to see the unicorn tapestries at the National Museum of the Middle Ages, also known as the Cluny Museum, or the Palace of Tau in Reims, where the kings of France dressed for their coronations.

Perched over the Grand Canyon close to a mile above the Colorado River, a massive, multimillion-dollar glass walkway will soon open for business as the centerpiece of a struggling Indian tribe's plan to lure tourists to its remote reservation. An engineering marvel or a colossal eyesore, depending on who is describing it, the horseshoe-shaped glass walkway will jut out 70 feet beyond the canyon's edge on the Hualapai Indian Reservation just west of Grand Canyon Village.

Buzz Aldrin, 77, the Apollo 11 astronaut who walked on the moon in 1969, plans to be among the first to stroll above the Grand Canyon in a massive, glass-bottomed observation deck known as the Skywalk. The Hualapai Indian Reservation hired Aldrin to join its March 20 opening ceremony.