Subject predicate When? Where? Why? How?
This sentence demonstrates how conjunctions such as and, but, and or are marked.
We can take an imaginary trip across our state. The journey starts in the morning. At the upper end of Grays Harbor, near the town of Aberdeen, we board a plane. As the plane ascends, you see another large bay to the south. It is called Willapa Bay. The Long Beach Peninsula is a long strip of land between Willapa Bay and the Pacific Ocean. Now we look north. We see thick evergreen forests right next to the shore. In the south there are sandy beaches, but in the north are many rocks.
The plane flies south of the Olympic Mountains. You can see snow on the tallest peaks all year long. The plane is now flying over gently rolling hills.
Soon you fly over a long, narrow body of water. George Vancouver explored this area by ship in the late 1700’s. He gratefully named it Puget Sound to honor an aide with him named Peter Puget. In the late 1700’s many Native Americans lived in the Puget Sound area. Now there are big cities along the shores of Puget Sound, and there are crowds of cars and trucks on its many highways.
Beyond the cities you can see farms among the forests. This part of the state is called the “Western Lowlands” because it is in the western part of the state and because it is near sea level. Several rivers flow through the Western Lowlands and into the Pacific Ocean.
Farther east, in the middle of the state, where the cities disappear, rise the Cascade Mountains. Snow covers many of these peaks all year long because they are so high. Like a tall wall, the Cascade Mountains keep most of the moisture on the west side of the state.
Because of the Cascade Mountains, much less rain falls on the east side of the state. The scenery changes suddenly on the east side of the mountains because it is so much drier. You can sometimes see green farmland among the dry grasslands, but farmers usually have to irrigate their land to make crops grow in this dry part of the state.
Much of the water for irrigation is taken from the Columbia River. This river flows from British Columbia south through eastern Washington and then east through a gap in the Cascades to the Pacific Ocean. The plane flies north now to the northeast corner of the state. We see the Columbia River. The river flows south through the Okanogan Highlands. Then it turns sharply west before it bends south and east around the Columbia Plateau. Around here, this part of the state is known as the Big Bend.
Now we see below us the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Less rain falls here than in the Olympic Mountains or in the Cascade Mountains, so the forests grow less thickly. We have come to the Okanogan Highlands and nearly to the end of our journey. The plane will fly south now and take us to Spokane.