Geography Challenge (or: how Janitor spent his summer vacation)

[Janitor]

I took a trip in August. I am curious to see if anyone can figure out the places where I took these digital pictures. Now if you figure Janitor as an international playboy jetsetter, these pictures could have been taken anywhere in the world. Otherwise, you can safely assume they were accessible by road in the western part of the lower 48 United States.

I'll start with the ones I think are easiest to guess.

 

[Janitor]

Item 1 - if I have figured out how to upload an image file.

 

[Janitor]

Um, image uploading may not be working for me, so come back in a couple of days.



(I'm not sure if I got all five images uploaded, or certain ones more than once, or none at all.)

 

[Gokul43201]

Looking forward to this...

 

[The Bob]

Looking forward to this...

So am I.

The Bob (2004 ©)

 

[BobG]

It's obviously the "Lost Turnpike of Pennsylvania", the section that passes through Ray's Hill and (that other really long tunnel).

Unless you are a jetsetter, in which case it's Antarctica.

 

[Gokul43201]

Do you see something that I don't...or are you just spooking us ?

 

[The Bob]

Do you see something that I don't...or are you just spooking us ?

He is trying to scare us.

The Bob (2004 ©)

 

[Janitor]

If they give out 'Science Expert' medals here, maybe they should also hand out 'Computer Doofus' awards. I think my problem was that my images were bigger than the 400x400 pixel limit. Give me ten hours to get back to the computer with my photos on it and re-size them.

{Fifty lashes with a wet noodle.}

 

[Janitor]

{Cracks knuckles and says, "Okay, this time I think it will work."}

I was standing just behind a safety rail when taking this photograph.

 

[Janitor]

Free-of-charge to walk through this display of neat stuff.

 

[Janitor]

A fancier camera would have allowed me to put on a wide-angle lens and get a more satisfying picture at this location.

 

[Janitor]

Dust was blowing from the same spot the whole time I was there, though there was no vehicle there to stir up the dust. It must have been looser soil in that one spot.

I will be very surprised if anyone comes within 40 miles of this place.

 

[Janitor]

Final photo. Not much here to distinguish this place from thousands of others as far as geology and flora go. But if you have had a class on American history, you may well have read about something that happened within a couple hundred yards of where I was when I took this.

Hint: historically, this site has something of a connection with the site at which the previous (dusty) picture was taken.

 

[Moonbear]

Ooh, I can't wait. At least this time I see attachments pending approval, so you must have gotten it right finally! Hopefully you weren't geography challenged on your vacation (unless getting lost is your idea of fun).

 

[Janitor]

This & that

I must have passed ten different places where the pavement was melted, presumably from vehicles burning down to cinders.

I saw a string of Union Pacific flat cars parked in a railroad yard at one point on my trip. Each flat had three cylindrical tanks mounted horizontally. The stenciled lettering on the tanks said: PHOSPHORUS, YELLOW, UNDER WATER, CLASS 4.2 ... RQ, TOXIC MARINE POLLUTANT.[/color] Sounds like pretty nasty stuff to me. Anybody know who would buy that product and what they would use it for? I don't know the answer to that.

 

[Janitor]

... Hopefully you weren't geography challenged on your vacation (unless getting lost is your idea of fun)...

I only missed one exit on the whole trip!

 

[enigma]

1) Grand Canyon?
2) JPL?

 

[Janitor]

1) Grand Canyon?
2) JPL?

1) Right river (the Colorado River), but the wrong location (not Arizona)

2) Nope-- notice how dry the land is beyond the manicured green land

 

[Evo]

A fancier camera would have allowed me to put on a wide-angle lens and get a more satisfying picture at this location.

The meteor crater in Arizona. (had to google for the name) Barringer Meteor Crater

Cool pictures Janitor!

edit - no, I take it back, that looks too deep and not large enough & do I see water?

hmmmm

 

[Janitor]

The meteor crater in Arizona. (had to google for the name) Barringer Meteor Crater

Cool pictures Janitor!

Thanks! Definitely a crater, but not of meteoric origin, and not in Arizona. (I have been to Meteor Crater on other trips though.)

 

[Evo]

Yeah, I realized after a second it was a volcanic crater, lakes seem to form in those. But I don't remember where it is.

 

[Janitor]

What looks like water on the crater floor is actually a lighter-colored soil that wind has blown into the crater. I don't doubt that after a rainy season there could be a shallow lake there for a time, though this is located in a place where it does not rain much.

 

[Evo]

What looks like water on the crater floor is actually a lighter-colored soil that wind has blown into the crater. I don't doubt that after a rainy season there could be a shallow lake there for a time, though this is located in a place where it does not rain much.

Hmmm, it gets more and more mysterious.

Janitor, are you positive you never left the planet?

 

[Janitor]

Janitor, are you positive you never left the planet?

The location is Earth.

The municipal water supply where I grew up turns out to have been contaminated by trichloroethylene. That explains a lot.

 

[Gokul43201]

Free-of-charge to walk through this display of neat stuff.

Going for the obvious guess : Is this the Thiokol plant, somewhere in Colorado (I think) ?

 

[Janitor]

Correct! I guess you could read the printing on the rocket.

The big rocket is one of the two boosters that strap onto the Space Shuttle's fuel tank. It comes back down to the Atlantic Ocean by parachute and is towed back to shore for refurbishing and re-use.

The Thiokol facility is in northern Utah. About a ten-minute drive to the left of the picture is the 'Golden Spike' site where the two railroad-building companies met up to form the first transcontinental railroad in the U.S. You can't quite see the north end of the Great Salt Lake itself from the area, but you can see white salty ground out in that direction.

 

[Gokul43201]

Yes, you can clearly read "THIOKOL" on the rocket. I knew their plant was either in Utah or Colorado. For some reason, I thought it was Colorado...I recall reading about Alcoa selling Thiokol to another company a couple of years ago.

 

[Janitor]

I didn't know about the Alcoa connection. I can remember when it was called Morton-Thiokol, and supposedly the 'Morton' part was the salt-making company, which I guess scooped up salt from the edges of the Salt Lake.

 

[BobG]

Yes, you can clearly read "THIOKOL" on the rocket. I knew their plant was either in Utah or Colorado. For some reason, I thought it was Colorado...I recall reading about Alcoa selling Thiokol to another company a couple of years ago.

They make Atlas and Delta rockets in Colorado.

I would have guessed somewhere in Western Colorado (around Grand Junction) or Eastern Utah for the first photograph. The Morton-Thiokol picture makes me think it's probably Utah, but I'd be at a loss to identify the place closer than that.