"Where am I?" Game

[caja-dglh]

[San Bernardhinault]

Right. So we believe it's

in North America because of the stop sign and the overhead power cables
Probably in the Pacific Northwest because of the pine trees, and the fog/sun thing
Possibly not very wealthy because of the truck's spare wheel and the cheaper looking cars
And somewhere that's either California, Pennsylvania, British Columbia or Washington because the license plates are whiteish, with the truck's looking like Pennsylvania. But it could also be Alaska or Oregon.
But more likely BC because of the way the windows are facing.

But we could be wrong about all of these and in fact it could be in China or Russia.

And apart from that we're floundering and aren't being told if we're even vaguely in the right vicinity.

If it's somewhere between Santa Barbara and Nome, there are probably about 1200 or so incorporated cities to choose from, so we could just start listing them?

[caja-dglh]

Alright.. I said one of you was a lot closer than others. You are generally (and sometimes very well) headed in the right direction. It is not China or Russia.

You really ought to trust your intuition as most of the ideas are pointing in the right direction. Other than maybe the odd giant red herring.

[ad hoc]

The new picture makes me think some suburb of Seattle looking across the Puget Sound. The street name sign looks very USA (though I have no recollection of what similar signs look like in Canada). If it's on the west coast it has to be looking west rather than east back at the mainland because otherwise the shadows would put the sun in the North

[San Bernardhinault]

Ooh! New pic. Two boats confirms proximity to the water. Agree that the street sign looks USian. Vehicles now seem to be trucks plus an SUV, so perhaps the quality of cars in the first pic was a red herring. We seems to be looking at an inlet across the water which suggests that we need to go north of California - California doesn't have many natural harbours.

The truck nearest the camera has what looks like a yellow license plate, which is a traditional Alaska plate colour. Yet the others don't match that.

[ursus arctos]

I'm going for a poorer (though still comfortable) part of the San Juan Islands

The street sign is very USian, and the boats make me think island, especially as the islands are less affluent than the mainland which faces them, Not a touristed bit like Friday Harbor, obviously,

Washington plates, btw

[S. aureus]

The sun doesn't look like it's very high to my eyes (less than 45 degree angle looking at the stop sign), so maybe we're looking SW or NW (morning or afternoon) in this view, as it doesn't appear to be winter.
The license plate of the truck at the front appears to be yellow, which I don't think helps.

[caja-dglh]

For anyone interested in these things, this is quite literally just round the corner from the last picture. Maybe a two minute walk to get a good picture to work with.

[San Bernardhinault]

Does the whole of the Northwest get the marine layer fog? Because that's certainly what the first pic looks like. But I agree probably further north because we can look across water to hills from a built up road. Somewhere like Astoria in Oregon, perhaps? Inclined to go against Alaska because the only really built up places near water are Anchorage and Juneau, and Anchorage is itself a bit flatter. I don't know Juneau but Streetview doesn't have a whole lot of content for it.

[ursus arctos]

Dunno about Alaska, and it works a bit different in BC in my experience, but generally yes.

[caja-dglh]

Should I help you eliminate a red herring? I will help you eliminate a red herring. Nothing PA going on around there.

alaska-license-plate.jpg

[San Bernardhinault]

Ok. That adds up along with the yellow plate on the truck (although it could have been NY and PA…). So, it’s in Alaska. Looking across water. I still think Anchorage is probably too flat (and too built up).

[San Bernardhinault]

Right. If it is Alaska, which Caja seems to imply that it is, the number of places that have decent Streetview are pretty limited. Juneau has the mixed weather, but views towards and across the water seem to have more fishing/industrial stuff. Otherwise it's really around Anchorage or down the Kenai Peninsula. Seward seemed very promising (and I'm surprised that Caja hasn't tried to do the Alaskaman ultra tri that I helped with down there because it involves swimming in the glacier outflow which seems right up Caja's alley) but there are very few streets and I can't find his views. That probably does put us back closer to Anchorage, maybe one of the places overlooking the Knik Arm? The Cook inlet side of Kenai - Kenai, Soldotna and Homer - don't seem to have mountains across the water close enough to match picture two.

[caja-dglh]

You are doing good work. In finding me new events I mean. But also in working on where it is. I will tell you it is a City, for whatever that is worth. Oh - and the other place I posted this has already found it. Though some of the lengthy chat / thoughts on here have been *way* better and are the fun I find in this game and hoped would work here too. It truly reveals some remarkably odd bits of knowledge (disabled parking painting across Europe being one)

[ad hoc]

I've done a bit of looking around Juneau and I sort of feel like the mountain in the background of picture 2 could be the one you can see from the streets north/north east of the airport looking southwest. But I don't want to lead anyone up the garden path, because it really feels more like a vague sense of possibility than anything more concrete

[caja-dglh]

In future I would not be in the mind to give such clues, but I also think this game could work great with all you folk and crazy knowledge.

it is not Juneau. Ursus’ guesses also were remarkably well deduced.

[caja-dglh]

You are all triangulating within pissing distance, really.

[San Bernardhinault]

Ursus's guesses were the San Juan Islands because the street signs looked US, and British Columbia because of zoning regs. Meanwhile, Caja has shown us an Alaska plate that matches the plate on the lorry in pic 1, and the yellow license plate on the truck in pic 2 looks like a standard Alaska one.

Yet there are only a handful of places in Alaska that have a fair amount of Streetview coverage - and I imagine even fewer that have multiple days of it which we must have given the change in weather.

And Caja claims that it's a city - the only remaining cities of bigger than 10k people in Alaska are Fairbanks and Anchorage (maybe it's smaller than 10k, but even then there aren't many)

Fairbanks seems to be a non-starter given that it's inland and won't have that coastal fog/marine layer thing.

An additional look around Anchorage still seems to show nowhere you can look across the water at mountains.

So perhaps we're back in BC and the license plates are a red herring? There's no BC or WA state yellow plates, I think. But if they are a red herring, maybe we're out on Victoria Island? Except that doesn't match the street signs being American.

[San Bernardhinault]

I feel like I'm going backwards or have contradictory info.

I was looking somewhere like Nanaimo on Victoria Island, or in West Vancouver, but it's no good. The street name signs are all blue - I wasn't 100% sure if the green definitely meant US but that seems to suggest that they are.

[ursus arctos]

How about Port Townsend.

The Google Maps server isn't responding for me to check

[S. aureus]

3426 Denali Avenue, Ketchikan AK for the first view.

[S. aureus]

648 Buren Road for the second

[ursus arctos]

Bravo

[S. aureus]

Well, I had a lot of help.

[San Bernardhinault]

Very impressive work, SA. I hadn't spotted the streetmap stuff that far south - just photo stills.

And the second is therefore 648 Buren Road, Ketchikan, AK