(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.)
Oh my goodness! Never in a million years did I expect to win. Because Vesuvius is so recognisable, I assumed lots of people would guess the right location, and the winner would be the person who had the best inside knowledge, anecdotes, etc. I’m honestly flabbergasted!
As nice as the VFYW book no doubt is, I think I’d like the luxury of two free years of Dish please. Many thanks — this has really made my week!
Here’s the winner from the previous week in San Diego:
Oh, sorry that my Europe trip, plus other distractions, prevented me from sending a following. I would love a copy of the VFYW book! I live in Riverside County but my view to the south is San Diego County, about four miles away. And I have been downtown many times for meetings and conferences.
From our super-sleuth in Eagle Rock:
The Intrepid Couch Traveler is really upping his game lately. I’m stoked for the inevitable TV series where he unmasks other sleuths and takes them on sedentary global adventures.
Also, that couch is its own personality. Perfect sidekick. Does it have a name?
ICT responds:
She is Couchella, and I love her.
And how did she get such a completely original and not at all obvious and derivative name like Couchella?
Sofa-king clever :)
On to this week’s view, here’s the king of the archive — the Berkeley super-sleuth:
Whoa! This has to be the least appealing view since contest #495 in Medford! Which itself had to have been the least appealing view since contest #489 in Redding. Which was in competition with Calgary (contest #477) — although that one included some greenery, which was nice. But probably nothing beats the view in Khabarovsk (contest #456) — not even this week’s, which has a noteworthy desert ridge with a striking mesa to keep things interesting. Not complaining. It’s just that seeing this one came as a bit of a shock so soon after Sorrento.
Our super-sleuth in Yakima knows the view well:
Last October I sent you a candidate view for the contest — also in [town redacted] — that I took on my trip to the Grand Canyon. Looking back at the photo, I notice that the hills in the background are the same hills shown in this week’s view:
The Brookline super-sleuth writes, “This week had me chasing down a blue-and-yellow herring”:
The large sign next to the highway seemed like an obvious clue, and although for a few minutes I was convinced it read “LOCO MAS” (with a really big M in a flamboyant font), I soon realized that it was the familiar Goodyear logo with the Wingfoot symbol in the middle:
Although this seemed like a simple matter of searching for Goodyear locations, things were not as they appeared. The store-finder function on the company website was not terribly user-friendly, nor was it returning suitable hits for Goodyear-owned locations in the southwestern US states where I was focusing my efforts.
On a hunch, I looked up Goodyear corporate office locations and noted one in [town redacted]. It turned out that this office was near an airport on the outer edge of town with no sign of the sign, so I was discouraged. But the surrounding mountains looked very similar, so I Google Streeted around town while looking for RV parks near highways and soon stumbled upon the very sign outside of a non-Goodyear business that would not have been listed on the website:
Here’s Giuseppe, our super-sleuth in Rome:
I had high hopes for that Goodyear sign, but they were quickly dashed when I couldn’t find the store. So, I had to slog endlessly through mountains and RV parks. Luckily, I guessed the right state and stuck with it.
Yakima had better luck with the Goodyear:
Even though there doesn’t seem to be enough room to fit a major interstate in the near background, the inscrutable signs in the view really are interstate signs on I-40:
A newcomer to the contest writes:
This photo appears to be taken from a higher floor of a building in El Paso, Texas, likely from a hotel or office overlooking the Arvey RV Park (or a very similar lot) on the city’s east side.
Fun fact: Mountains in the background are the Franklin Mountains which at over 24,000 acres comprise the largest state park in the nation located within a cities limits.
Another guess for that city comes from the Riverwoods super-sleuth:
So another mountain view baffles me, but I also didn’t have much time this week. Unfortunately my 85-year-old mother had a fall and it set off a whirlwind of decision-making and care. Thankfully she is ok, but her body isn’t getting stronger and it’s sad to see her go thru serious aging struggles.
I asked a niece from Denver if she recognized these mountains. She thinks they are the Franklin Mountains of El Paso, so I’m hoping she’s correct.
What’s that strange beam of light on the horizon? The Intrepid Couch Traveler sees the truth out there:
Chris pulled some strings this week to get advance access to the Pentagon’s super-secret UFO photo dump, picking the only interesting photo of the whole lot, with an eerie beam of light from a cloaked spacecraft, surely piloted by an alien of strange and wondrous powers:
As Couchella and I pull into town to get our kicks, we realize the eerie beam of light truly does come from an alien of strange and wondrous powers, who was kind enough to de-cloak long enough to say hi.
Our super-sleuth in San Mateo also has a go:
The Reimagined transforms this quiet daytime view into a cinematic sci-fi scene by turning the ordinary [state redacted] desert landscape into the setting for a UFO abduction at sunset:
I kept the original geography, RV park, bus parking lot, and mountains recognizable so the image still feels grounded in a real place, but I changed the lighting to dramatic golden hour colors and added a cow being lifted into a flying saucer. I chose that because this VFYW already has a huge open sky, isolated desert atmosphere, and a slightly mysterious vibe that felt perfect for a playful “close encounters” vibe.
The CO/NJ super-sleuth observes:
To have installed that fearsomely nasty, ledge-top deterrent outside our window, the hotel either has a major problem with crime or crapping birds. Yikes.
From the A2 Team in Ann Arbor:
The spikes in the foreground, together with a landscape of the Southwest, really threw us off for a while. Were we looking at a piece of the border wall? No, they use other forms, if at all. Or a prison wall? Not likely, and a pain to search for.
So finally, we just went with the RV park and eventually got to [town redacted], where the truck visible in our picture …
… was already parked there in 2018, according to Google Maps:
Identifying the spikes is our “a-maize-ing sleuth” in Oklahoma City
Outside the window is a parapet with bird deterrent spikes. The gadget at the lower right of the photo turns out to be a wall-mounted exterior lamp, shown in full in this photo posted by another guest of the hotel:
The fixture is angled upward to illuminate the hotel exterior.
The Ridgewood super-sleuth names the right state:
This week’s view is from ... Montana!
JK.
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