Where Am I -- Volume III

[Rick Quinn]

Is everybody ready for another round? Here we go, with several views of a particularly lovely body of water:







This might be a bay, a fjord, a lake, possibly even a river! My lips are sealed, because I want you to name that well-known body of water so that you can tell me, please:

Where am I?

And while you're at it, name the road that runs alongside this--whatever it is. Give us the official name, the nickname, or the Number. (Any or all of the above will count as a correct answer.)



Last but certainly not least: a cryptic clue! There's a single word visible in this photograph, a single word that MIGHT be the key to the whole business! But--do you suppose I might have scrambled up the letters to make it a little tougher? Maybe--it wouldn't be the first time! (Hey, I said this clue was cryptic--as in, puzzling, or secret!)



To recap:

Name the body of water

Name the road

For bonus points: Explain the significance of the roadside memorial (the cryptic clue).

This will either be super hard, or super easy. I'll be curious to see which!

Rick

[Rick Quinn]

Here's a better look at that cryptic clue:



Two letters have been transposed. If you can figure out the proper sequence, you can Google it to unlock the puzzle.

To recap:

Name the body of water



Name the road



For bonus points: Explain the significance of the roadside memorial (the cryptic clue).

This will either be super hard, or super easy. I'll be curious to see which!

Rick

[Rick Quinn]

Time to break out the good silver:




The body of water is a Lake; and the road is a well-known Highway.

I'm not sure I could make it any easier! (But you'll still need to unscramble the sign at that roadside memorial ;-)

Rick

[glc]

I can't figure out the roadside memorial, but here's a wild guess based on nothing: Silver Lake in WA, Spirit Lake Memorial Highway?

[Rick Quinn]

I can't figure out the roadside memorial, but here's a wild guess based on nothing: Silver Lake in WA, Spirit Lake Memorial Highway?

Kudos for the attempt, but no, not quite. Let's say you started out at Silver Lake, Washington: it would take you the best part of a week to get to this particular Where am I location. And the mystery lake is a bit bigger: approximately forty times the size of Silver Lake, making it the largest lake within the borders of the area where it's located.

(All that should narrow it down some!)

Rick

[Rick Quinn]

I'm surprised this one hasn't been solved long since, but if you're really stuck, I'll try a different approach. (Note: the times on the following entries are taken from the time stamps on my original digital photographs.)

At 12:31 PM on a lovely summer day, I was driving along this road, admiring the mountains, off in the distance:



At 12:47 PM, I was close enough for a better view, so I stopped to take this picture:



By 1:12 PM, the mountains were closer still, and there were icy streams coming off the glaciers:



Another straightaway, and at 1:27 PM, I saw what looked like a lake, straight up ahead:



When I saw THIS gorgeous scene, mountains and clouds reflected in the perfect glass-like surface of that ice-blue lake, I literally screeched to a halt, my heart racing, my palms sweating, and my eyes big as saucers as I fumbled for my camera.



This was one of my treasured "Oh, WOW!" moments, usually prompted by a view, off the side of the road, or around a bend in the trail, an aspect that is so outrageously awe-inspiring that I often forget to breathe. I stood there until a breeze came up, rippling the water and spoiling the perfect mirror. I did, nevertheless, manage to preserve the moment with some pretty good pictures, like this one, taken at 1:37 PM.

Where am I?

What road am I driving on?

(Psst! Want to try a clever trick? Use your mouse to 'Right click' on that last picture--the photo of the mountains and clouds reflected in the water. Select, "Save image as," and save it somewhere; next, open up Google, and select the "Images" tab. Finally, 'Drag and drop' the image of the cloudy lake into the Google search bar. ;-)

Let me know if you get any hits! I'd be particularly interested in knowing whether your searches retrieve any "Pages that include matching images," and if so, what are those pages?

Rick

[glc]

You really did give it away - the image search hit on Kluane National Park and Reserve in the Yukon.

Just a bit of exploring Google Maps around there says that's Kluane Lake on the Alaska Highway. I still have no idea about that memorial.

Two pages that include matching images, one here and one on your site:

https://www.roadtripamerica.com/foru...tion-Bay-Yukon

http://www.rcquinn.com/alaska-highway-clone/

[Rick Quinn]

That was what you call a slow pitch, right over the plate. Google is getting so darned sophisticated, it actually shocks me from time to time. You might recall that I had that back and forth dialogue with Utahtea recently, about picture searches? I try not to make this game too easy, so I've taken to "pre-testing" my clues before I post them, by dropping each picture into the search bar on Google Images. Most of the photos in this set returned results like :"mountain," or "clouds," or "lake," but when I tested that last picture, it not only identified the location, it identified the specific photograph, and tracked it right straight back to me! I had no idea that it would do that, so I was honestly a bit taken aback.

Thank you, glc, for participating in my little experiment. Google has a way of prioritizing search results for individual users, and I had to wonder if it might be showing me my own website through some behind-the-scenes connection in my browsing history. When you did the search and got the same results as me, that proved that it wasn't personal: Google really was identifying my photograph, out of all the billions of images on the web, and that really is amazing!

Just for the heck of it, I tried running a search on a different version of the photograph: exactly the same image, but a little sharper contrast, and brighter colors. The result of that search was yet another surprise! Try if for yourself, if you're curious: right click each of these two pictures, then "save image as," and then drag and drop into the Google Image search bar:





All of which proves that Google has good taste, since version #1 is clearly the better of the two. I try not to think too hard about the sheer computing power required to make a match like that in 6/10 of a second. It freaks me out, just a little, and it makes my brain hurt...

Rick

[Rick Quinn]

I almost forgot about that strange memorial. Here's the clue the way I posted it:




And here's the marker before I scrambled the letters:



Small difference, but the correct spelling would have unlocked the puzzle on the spot. If you Google "Mbayata," you get this:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/ilanshacham/21451159512

and this:

https://fineartamerica.com/featured/...le-warren.html

Among other things. A memorial to a young man who died at that spot, and very much a giveaway--but since nobody solved the scrambled marker, I was obviously too clever for my own good!

Rick

[Utahtea]

You really did give it away - the image search hit on Kluane National Park and Reserve in the Yukon.

Just a bit of exploring Google Maps around there says that's Kluane Lake on the Alaska Highway. I still have no idea about that memorial.

Two pages that include matching images, one here and one on your site:

https://www.roadtripamerica.com/foru...tion-Bay-Yukon

http://www.rcquinn.com/alaska-highway-clone/

I just didn't have time to check out all the clues and to think we passed Kluane National Park & Reserve in the Yukon coming and going in 1992 when we drove the Alaska Highway up to Alaska and back home!

Utahtea