National Parks

In a land of innovation and ideas, it’s often called “America’s best idea.” We will weigh on the wonders of nature and wildlife in the wilderness. Join me as we face new frontiers while picking apart picturesque national parks in The USA on today’s episode of FYI. 

If you want EXCLUSIVE bonus audio/video content along with, weekly/monthly classes, and tons of advantages; become a Patreon member at http://patreon.com/albertoalonso 

Transcript

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in a land of innovation and ideas it's often called america's best idea we will weigh in on the wonders of nature and wildlife in the wilderness join me as we face new frontiers while picking apart picturesque national parks in the usa on today's episode of f y ah welcome to for your info english you got it[Applause][Music] so[Applause] hello hello hello everybody and welcome to this another exciting episode of fyi for your english the show where we tackle a bunch of different topics every single week remember if you have any suggestions we'd love to hear from you just drop me a line on social media or wherever you can find me in fact the easiest way is my website alberto alonso dot com and you'll find links to my twitter instagram facebook youtube patreon and everything else so if you haven't figured it out yet today we're going to talk about national parks i know you call them parques naturales but since in the united states they're run by the federal government we call them national parks they're not just run by the federal government they're also designated as well and we're going to talk about all the history and interesting tidbits of information about american national parks on today's show and i'm excited because i've been to so many but i have so many more to check off my list to check off is mastachar como terminado and to cross out es mas tachar como porque un so today we're going to go into nature the great outdoors careful with that word nature i've heard people say not today believe it or not my ears bled we say nature the natural world and we don't say the nature if you noticed i said the wonders of nature because we're speaking in general nature and who doesn't love nature if you don't love nature i've got to say there's something wrong with you no offense and i'm no professional but nature is beautiful it's inspiring it's everything around us we are nature i always tell people when they compare us to they say oh look at that the dog is just like us or we're just like that dog and i said well actually we are we're animals too i mean we are humans we're homo sapiens but we're animals we are mammals mammy pheros right correct me if i'm wrong i'm no expert i say that in every episode as a disclaimer i'm no expert no soy experto so let's take a look at the intro because i always like to put a lot of vocabulary words in the intro some awesome adjectives and of course you just caught me alliteration i just used it awesome adjectives ah please somebody help me i can't stop i need help with this alliteration all right so i said in a land of innovation and ideas innovation is innovation so to innovate is the verb and ideas ideas and the national park system has often been called america's best idea and that's what i meant when i said that in the united states we have a lot of ideas in general we're a country that believes in ideas we bet on ideas but it's been said so that this was our best idea then i said we will weigh in on the wonders do you recognize the word way the way the word way is but to weigh in on it's a really good one is to evaluate right to weigh in on to assess we could say um to weigh in on another way you could say it is to interpenir it says here on word reference remember guys if you want to check any of these words you can get them if you are a patron remember if you're a patron depending on your level you'll have access to pdf sheets so that's great for those of you who are lower levels and you want to follow along with the vocabulary it's a great visual aid and if you want more information it's really simple go over to my patreon page and check it out it's patreon.com alberto alonso and you'll see there's a wide range of action of options excuse me a wide range is[Music] and we've got all kinds of levels from stars at three euros a month to interstellar students at 60 euros a month who have access to classes with me both weekly and monthly so if you want to find out what it's all about go over to patreon.com alberto alonso and join our online community of curious people that said i want to send a shout out to jose maria carolina eva mila deside alex patricio edgar loles and my interstellar students carmen diana and pilar thank you to all of you not just my interstellar students and my super duper students but all of you who make this podcast possible thank you thank you thank you i couldn't thank you enough then i said wildlife in the wilderness now this is interesting because we see the word wild a couple times which is salvage right but wild life is anything that lives out there in the wild be that salvaje or fauna we also say the word fauna as well to describe plants and animals wildlife cool word and then of course using my double alliteration i use the word wilderness and the wilderness when i think of the wilderness i think of a big uninhabited area where nobody lives as you say in the middle of nowhere immediately we say the same thing and so wilderness according to word references i think of an area that has not been developed then i said join me i always say join me because i want you to join me on our english adventure as we face to faces inferentar new frontiers nuevas fronteras while picking apart now here i did some triple alliteration while picking apart so what does it mean to pick apart something well think of a kid who's playing with their food and they're separating the peas los quisantes from the rice and they're separating the clams they're probably eating paella it sounds like right so to pick something apart and it literally means to dissect it right to look deeper into it right if you think about it so we're gonna pick it apart it could have a negative connotation but here we don't mean it in a negative way we're going to pick apart the picturesque national parks in the usa picturesque being pintoresco now i don't know if you guys know it but for most americans our national parks are a source of pride una fuente de orgullo we are very proud orguyosos of our national parks and if you've ever been to them there are so many they are so varied there are ones that are mountainous and ones that are flat others that are more like deserts and others that are green and lush frondoso but there's one thing that i think we can all agree on they are vast enormous they are vast landscapes that just make my country such a beautiful place decorated or dotted with these magical retreats these breathtaking places as we say this is an adjective we use a lot when we describe nature or a view we say it's it's breathtaking also when we talk about mountains we say the word majestic i just taught you the word lush which is a word we use when we talk about forests right so it's good to learn adjectives that go hand in hand with each other what do i mean by that i mean adjectives and nouns so there are certain adjectives that describe certain nouns when we talk about mountains we say majestic don't ask me why maybe it's the double alliteration hey i'm not the only one all right well let's look at the history you know me i always like to go back and see where it all started and we'd have to go back very very far but first i wanted to look at what is the national park service or what we call the nps well it is a federal agency within the united states and it's part of the department of the interior right the department of the interior and they run and also designate landmarks and national parks so now that we know who they are those are the people that are running the show yes they're taking care of the parks and they're voting on laws to make sure that we preserve these parks they are in charge acargos so before we get into the history let's take a look at some statistics as well i was pretty fascinated because as i said the word vast is a great word to describe the united states and its national parks there are 84 million acres now 84 million acres 84 million of anything is a lot uh now for those of you who want it in hectares uh just divide that number by 2.47 as you can tell math is not my forte let's just put it this way it's a whopping enorme 84 million acres makes sense that word whopping the whopper the burger king is i knew it meant something now out of the 419 parks in the national park system which as i said is run by the nps well this is a figure i have from 2019 out of 419 parks there are 62 that have the designation of national park as part of their official name so what do i mean there are a lot of parks there are a lot of landmarks in the united states that have been designated but there are 62 with the word national park in their name officially now speaking of whopping numbers do you know how many visits these american national parks received in 2019 okay write this number down this is a good opportunity to practice numbers 327 million 516 619 recreational visits to american national parks so that number if you wrote it down is tres mil dostientos siete millones quinientos di seismiel it's a lot easier for me in english one thing i will say though that we're looking at numbers remember in spanish you guys use a decimal point where you we use a comma and vice versa so switch your commas and your decimal points whether you're in english or in spanish so that number again these these are the amount of recreational visits they received in 2019 327 million five hundred and sixteen thousand six hundred and nineteen visits and well i figured i was interested after that in finding out which were the top five you know which were the ones that were most visited in 2019 and i i looked it up i always tell you guys to be curious well i practice what i preach number one on our list now remember this is as far as visits this is not the area or the the space that the park has this is the amount of visitors it receives every year well this is really 2019 but it can give you a general idea number one is the great smoky mountains national park now remember that word that's a tricky one you can say mountain como mountain you can say mountain but you cannot say mountain i won't allow it okay so the great smoky mountain smoke is con noblados no the great smoky mountains national park and that's located in tennessee and north carolina and that had 25 and a half half a courthouse no problem 20 excuse me 12 and a half did i say 25 i'm sorry 12 and a half million visitors in 2019 and when i think of the smoky mountains i'm not too familiar with the smoky mountains but i think of country music i think of that area because well nashville tennessee is where country music was born and north carolina well it's the south so the smoky mountains i didn't know it i thought it would be the grand canyon or something like that but no the great smoky mountains the most visited park in the united states in 2019 number two you guessed it the grand canyon national park now you call it el canyon de colorado there's just one problem we don't we call it the grand canyon and uh well this goes well this is this is the interesting part i remember being very confused when i moved to spain i was like why do you guys call it the colorado canyon if it's in arizona because there's a good trivia question why is it called canon de colorado if it's in arizona well the river that runs through it is called obviously the colorado river perez colorado colorful colorful that's what it literally means right colorful i love that and it is very colorful well the grand canyon receives almost 6 million just under six million visitors five point nine seven according to 5.97 million visitors in 2019. number three on our list the rocky mountain national park i think you call them the rocky mountain national park and that is in colorado i think of the rockies myself i've never been to the rockies that's on my bucket list as you say and i think of the rocky mountains i think of colorado and boulder colorado that's an interesting one the word boulder is a big rock and what can you find all over colorado the rocky mountains and what are the rocky mountains really big rocks all right the next one is zion national park zion empezando con theta and this one is in utah in utah and i've never been there now as i said there are so many parks 419 to be exact and that number changes they're always designate designating new areas to be parks but uh zion that's high on my list como de timos muy alto emilista zion national park in utah and that had 4.5 million visitors four and a half separate or four point five million visitors and that was tied with empathadocon number five you're saying we can't talk about national parks without talking about yosemite and that's right yosemite national park which is located in the sierra nevada no not in granada spain i mean the sierra nevada in california yeah i know we copied you guys well it was a good name you know the snowy mountains the snowy mountain peaks remember una sierra is a mountain range so one mountain is monte the mountains is a mountain range is when you talk about the rockies or any of these the smoky mountains as we said so zion and yosemite you say yosemite i think we don't we say yosemite and that's in fifth place tied with zion national park and uh i'm dying to go to yosemite so the only one i've been to on that list is the grand canyon and i'm gonna tell you guys all about my experiences at the grand canyon in the bonus part of today's show but first i promised you some history so let's start with yosemite we just said yosemite it's probably the most well-known one and well this was discovered or really promoted by settlers now settlers are people who come to live in an area and they settle that area and this was around the mid-1800s during what we called the westward expansion when people started moving west to look for opportunities in the united states obviously and well they noticed uh these guys noticed that there was a very different landscape out there extremely different to the landscapes out east you know back home where they came from and so they said wait this is incredible we've never seen anything like this in this country we've we've got to take note so uh and they thought that it would be a great spot for recreation and for tourists and when i say they i'm talking about a british guy named james hutchins and this was in 1850 him along with two indian guides ghias are guides well they went to the yosemite valley yosemite and they said we're going to write about this we you know this is just so unique it hasn't been seen before it didn't remind them of anything they saw in europe either we got to write about this and they started writing uh articles to promote that area uh known as the yosemite valley and i don't believe in overnight success uh exito de nocherra manana but it was basically an overnight success they they i guess they described the park so well because now it's easy take some pictures and i think anybody who's seen pictures of yosemite is like uh where do i sign up i'm in you know um but back then it was articles but it worked people started coming they were flocking there eating masas to flock but you want to know the interesting fact about all of this yosemite was not our first national park it wasn't it's probably one of the most popular ones to this day and it was an early park that was discovered but it wasn't our first one the first one wasn't until 1872 and that was yellowstone um you guys remember that one from yogi bear hey boo boo what are you gonna do boo boo yo oh no that's jelly stone i'm sorry yellowstone which is another very famous park in the united states i think everybody all over the world is familiar with yosemite and yellowstone but yosemite was kind of discovered first but the first one to be designated or declared a national park was yellowstone and that was in 1872 by ulysses s grant and i decided i would take you guys to yellowstone on this episode so let's look at some fun facts about this amazing place called yellowstone it is home to more than 500 active geysers now a geyser is something that spits water out of the ground to spit this escupid and you know now you're thinking 500 in one national park okay 500 active geysers and you want to know that another interesting fact which makes it even more fascinating more than half of the world's geysers so that is that makes up more than half of the world's geysers yellowstone's 500 active geysers so that means in the world there are under a thousand geysers and i think the most famous one is old faithful i think this one has been shown in cartoons and everything old faithful in yellowstone we talked about fauna of course plants and animals and well uh there are 285 species of birds in yellowstone a hundred and fifty that nest there are right to nest and careful with that word species because if you're like me you mix it up a little bit so spices are what you use in the kitchen especially and species is especially similar maybe i mixed it up so a species of birds and spices are things like pepper cinnamon and things like this canela so 285 species of birds can be found there and bears and lions and tigers and bears oh my so the wizard of oz but okay you won't find lions but you will find bears there and aside from that another thing that i thought was fascinating was it's not just about the fauna there's an archaeological or a cultural aspect to it as well and there are more than 1 800 this is astounding 1 800 known archaeological sites within the park that's i mean a mind-blowing fact another one about 290 290 casitres tintos waterfalls yeah 290 waterfalls can be found throughout yellowstone park and there are last fun fact and then we'll move on there are approximately 1 000 miles of hiking trails now 1 000 miles for our european friends 1 609 kilometers of hiking trails and to hike is sinderismo and the trail is el sendero yeah 1609 kilometers that's a lot of hiking and i'll teach you an idiom while we're at it and it's take a hike i think you say in spanish asparagus i love that one go fry asparagus we say take a hike or go fly a kite that's another way to say it all right well another guy we can't talk about national parks without mentioning is a guy named john muir now john muir was also known as aka john of the mountains or the father of national parks and he was an influential scottish american a naturalist an author philosopher botanist zoologist i mean the guy who he had a lot of professions let's put it that way as we say in english he wore a lot of hats a jack of all trades a jack of all trades is poco de todo but he was an early advocate we've looked at that word on the podcast before defensor of the preservation of the american wilderness and he wrote letters and essays and and books describing his adventures in nature especially in the sierra nevada area and well his activism helped preserve the yosemite valley and the sequoia national park which is another very famous national park in the united states so a lot of people say that you know our national parks might not even be what they are today without this guy and he you know through his writings and teachings convinced congress um to take this seriously the preservation of these parks and nobody took that more seriously than teddy roosevelt theodore roosevelt or as they lovingly call him teddy roosevelt who himself was a nature lover and was instrumental in getting national parks you know money and attention in the united states and that was from 1901 to 1909 and he uh he basically created five parks during that time as we said earlier yosemite being one of those and he also signed something called the 1906 antiquities act and this gave the president authority to create national monuments and uh you know to take government land and protect it uh when necessary so teddy roosevelt did a lot for the national park system and maybe again because of it was his own love for nature that spurred that then we go to 1962 and another american president woodrow wilson woodrow wilson was the one who said that we're going to establish who i told you before runs the show right to run the show or to call the shots is and he created the npr in 1916. uh excuse me not 1960 no 1960. i'm not sure if he was alive maybe 1916 he created the national park service and this is when they got organized and you know started to have funds and and all that stuff and really really protect the parks and we're going to talk about all that stuff including park rangers the people who take care of parks and give you help and who knows could even save your life one day if you're scaling el capitan which is a very famous peak that if you guys have mac if you're mac users one of the uh i think the mac capitan symbol is that face that cliff face the word cliff is so and since then well people have been obviously interested in conservation and taking care of these parks and making sure that they don't get turned into real estate developments or big shopping malls and that they're there for everybody to enjoy for generations and one of the great things is you can get a yearly pass and you can literally go to all the national parks in the united states it's on my bucket list again bucket list things i want to do before i die i want to get a trailer an rv as we call it and drive all over the united states and cross all of these or check all of these off my list all of them all 400 and what was the number i lost count all 419 national parks now i've seen a few of them and i'm going to tell you about my experience at american national parks in the bonus part of today's show some of the ones i've been to joshua tree many of you who are you too fans you'll recognize it it's the name of an album the joshua tree the grand canyon death valley i'll tell you about all those and much more plus i'm going to give you some tips some pointers that if you're ever going to go hiking or camping or just spend some time seeing national parks in the united states well these are some things that could help you along the way and we'll look at some inspiring nature quotes as well all that in the second bonus part of today's fyi you