(For the View From Your Window contest, the results below exceed the content limit for Substack’s email service, so to ensure that you see the full results, click the headline above.)
Wow! I’m still shocked to win after reading this contests all these years. I would love the VFYW book, since I’ve been planning to re-up my Dish subscription next year, now that we need Andrew’s commentary more than ever.
My partner and I love doing puzzles and traveling together, so your weekly contest has been a fun intersection of some of our favorite hobbies. She’s a VFYW monster now, and made me much more consistent about playing. So I guess we’ll be entering more regularly, especially since she’s annoyingly good at it — and we got engaged last weekend!
Congrats! From another previous winner:
I’m still a little frustrated that I didn’t put in a WAG for last week. Probably better, because I think I would have ended up somewhere in the NE rather than PNW. Like most of the sleuths, I knew the glass structure was the key to the contest, but I just didn’t ask the WOO (Wizard of Oz = Google) the right questions.
Here’s the “a-maize-ing sleuth” in Ann Arbor:
I see I got the window wrong last week, and it was entirely on me, being careless in my haste. Last Sunday I went to climb the Manitou Incline and fell on the snow/ice many times, so I’ve been Advil-addled for days, to cope with a bruised rib cage hurting all over.
Get well soon! Another followup comes from our super-sleuth in Bend:
Last week’s contest was the second time I failed to recognize my own state, but at least I was only one state away. In my defense, Oregon is very large and Bend is far from Portland, up in the High Desert with pretty much the opposite climate and topography. Below is a precipitation map of Oregon showing how Pacific storms drench the western 1/3 of the state (the “wet side”), while the Cascades block the storms, keeping the eastern 2/3 of the state extremely arid (the “dry side”) due to the rain shadow:
Had I known it was Portland, I would have included this very, very Portland music video (in a Craftsman house, of course) from the Portland band Ages and Ages:
From the super-sleuth in Chevy Chase:
Though I haven’t emailed these past few months, I have done every contest and have been grateful for the weekly distraction — even if the Wednesday PM deadline has somehow slipped by every week. Last week, I even found a good murder from 100 years ago:
1924: Portland woman kills landlady to draw attention to her religious tract. Or irreligious, I guess. Something about Satan. Other articles mentioned an Ouija board. V weird.
But once again, Wednesday came and went. Maybe I should get a real job, so I know what day it is, lol.
On to this week’s view, here’s our previous winner in Yakima:
Like the Terlingua view, this looks like morning light, so we’re looking southeast, obliquely out of a west-facing window. The gravel side of the Sinclair sign is more likely the gas station than the grass side, so it looks like we might be in the station building itself.
The super-sleuth in Sagaponack writes, “Nice challenge to cull through 1,700 Sinclair stations!” The Chicagoland sleuth visualizes that challenge:
What’s funny about this view is that the most obvious feature is also the most superfluous. The Sinclair gas station sign and mascot draw the eye, but it doesn't really help to tell us where the town is:
So, there are no Sinclairs in Florida. Cross that off the list!
Another writes:
I don’t play this puzzle, since there seems to be a lot of people who travel more than I do. However, I do believe this week’s photo was taken somewhere in New Jersey. I would hazard upstate, perhaps west NJ?
He’s on the right track with “west”. A previous winner narrows down the map considerably:
So, I missed last week’s contest, and a quick look at this week’s view has me thinking you are going all soft on us again. I mean, I just need to google “Sinclair gas station and dinosaur statue” and I will have the location, right?!
D’OH!
It turns out that the dinosaur is the mascot for Sinclair Oil and Gas, and there is a dinosaur statue in front of every Sinclair gas station throughout the western United States.
From the super-sleuth in College Park:
Somewhere among my chattels, I have a circa 1990 inflatable green Sinclair-branded brontosaurus that’s maybe half the size of the one in the picture. I put it atop an armoire for years.
Many of those inflatables are available on eBay, including:
From the super-sleuth in Albany:
Looks Western US, not fully desert, not high Rockies. Sinclair is very present in the Western US (though they have stations stretching east to New Jersey), and this terrain feels Western. Looking at Sinclair stations, it seems that newer stations in larger cities have larger price signs with double support posts, rather than the single post on our sign. So it’s a smaller town with a retro motel with a pool, suggesting a vacation location.
Another goes with simply “Trinidad, Colorado,” and another guesses “Pinedale, Wyoming.” From our previous winner in Vashon:
It’s been a long time since I’ve played the contest. Shortly after the the thrill of my win and having my photo included in the VFYW, life got difficult, as it sometimes does. Participating in the weekly search has often served as an escape, but during the past year, it was often difficult to muster the energy. Watching — or in this case, reading — from the sidelines was the only substitute. It always made me smile.
My belated condolences to you and Andrew, and now to Chini for losing his stepdad. My heart goes out to all of you. The fact that even the great Chini took a break, but got back in the game, inspired me to do the same.
Here’s Chini flexing his game by circling the right window:
From a previous winner in Alexandria:
I spent wayyy too much time this week on the VFYW … and came up with nothing. The town looks smallish, but not on hard times (e.g. an espresso shop). Maybe it’s in central California, since there are dry mountains and wooden — not adobe — buildings. And there’s the Sputnik-themed, roadside motel sign — on old Route 66? But I couldn’t find any Sinclair dino statues there.
I did find a great photo that had all three elements of dry hills, Sinclair station, and Sputnik motel across the street, but it was not a match — and more than 50 years out of date:
Sigh … I’m giving up on this one, so I’ll just say somewhere in California. Good night — and thank you again for such a fun contest!
Another sleuth has a bit of fun by guessing, “Broadway and 34th Street, 145,000,000 years BC” — the end of the Jurassic Period. From San Mateo:
Dino the Apatosaurus, the Sinclair mascot, is way too small in the view, but even so, the rest of the view pales in comparison to Dino, however small. But if you’re going to have an Apatosaurus in your view, is has to be VERY BIG.
So here’s this week’s VFYW Reimagined:
The super-sleuth in Ridgewood names the right state:
I used to tour the US a lot playing shows with my band, and in my mind, just about every state has a distinctive “look”. North Dakota has endless green rolling hills; Oregon has forests and mid-sized mountains (prettiest state in the Continental US, in my opinion); and Utah has arid-looking hills and mountains spotted with trees — and that landscape is what this photo very much called to mind.
From there, I just Googled “sinclair coffee shop utah” and the coffee shop from the photo was featured in the top results.
Another sleuth wonders, “Vernal, Utah? That’s my guess!” — and it’s a town near Dinosaur National Monument, which has a fair share of sauropods:
When most people think of a dinosaur, they picture a huge plant-eating reptile with a long neck, long tail, and 4 pillar-like legs. Dinosaurs that meet this description are almost always members of the sauropod group. All sauropods belong to the saurischian (lizard hipped) order of dinosaurs. Sauropods are the most common type of dinosaur found in the Carnegie Quarry. Because they were so big and sturdy, their bones were much more likely to survive the fossilization process than those of smaller, frailer animals. The Quarry Exhibit Hall contains the fossilized remains of several Late Jurassic sauropods. These were Apatosaurus, Camarasaurus, Diplodocus, and Barosaurus.
Another mention of Vernal:
The terrain looks very Utah-like, and Vernal is next to Dinosaur National Monument, and all the businesses have kitschy dinosaur statues out front. My wife then let me know that the dinosaur was Sinclair’s mascot, so not necessarily Vernal. But the terrain sure looked like places we have been bicycling in Utah.
Our main hobby is going around to mountain towns and beautiful areas of the country bicycle riding. A few years ago I found the correct window in the contest in the Sierra Mountains, where we had just been cycling.
Thanks for all that you and Andrew (and your staff) do to keep Dish what it is.
Ha, I wish we had a staff. Another sleuth gets psychedelic with his dino entry:
I have never been to Utah, so no stories to tell. However, I did recently acquire a pretty awesome dinosaur-themed gig print from the recent Foo Fighters show in Los Angeles:
The super-sleuth in Tucson hints at the right answer:
Trivial Pursuit Question: Why would somebody open a breakfast, lunch, coffee, snacks, and a travel outfitter shop in an unused service bay of a too-expensive gas station in a Mormon town of 600, few of whom would partake of coffee anyway, especially at $3.25 plus tax with no free refills?
Trivial Pursuit Answer: When said shop is midway between two of the nation’s most popular National Parks, in a state which has more National Parks than you can swing a dead cat at.
I won’t name the National Parks, because everyone else who enters this contest will do so. I won’t bore you with how I Google-searched the Mormon Coop Building across the street. I will bore you with the geology, which was the key to me locating the general area.
First, this place is definitely in the semi-arid West — from the cottonwoods on the floor, to the scrub oak and P-J (that’s Western talk for pinion-juniper) on the slopes, to a touch of taller pines on the mesa tops. The pine tree in back of the gas sign indicates high elevation or cooler temperatures than the hot desert. The white-and-pink slopes and cliffs give away the area as either western Colorado or the Grand Staircase area of Utah, as opposed to Arizona. (I have been studying the rocks and geohydrology of the southern Colorado Plateau for many years.)
But I can’t win, so don’t try sending me no prizes. Continued classification as super-sleuth is all I desire.
San Mateo writes, “Zooming in on what was a blurred sign on the white building across the street led me to identify the building as the Zions Co-Operative Mercantile Institution (ZCMI)”:
The fascinating history of that building — and the failed utopia it represented — is detailed by a sleuth down the page. But first, another sleuth narrows down the area within Utah where our window is located:
Thanks for leaving enough breadcrumbs to feed a challenging VFYW!
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