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Where on Earth? (Week 15) Santa Cruz Island, California!
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Wow, I thought I lobbed out a difficult one this week and the very first answer nailed it. Congrats go out to Jim for correctly guessing on Wednesday that the above photo was taken at Potato Harbor on Santa Cruz Island (second place goes to Antheny and Ram for guessing the Channel Islands).
Santa Cruz is a part of the Channel Island chain just off the coast of California. Although most people are familiar with the most famous island in the chain, Catalina, few California natives realize that there are five others to the north.
I've been fortunate to visit three of the islands in the last few years. Although Anacapa is the most beautiful of those I visited, Santa Cruz is my favorite. I went for the first time two years ago for a bachelor party along with Erik, a fellow blogger here at Gadling.
Santa Cruz was the perfect location for a weekend away from Los Angeles. It has a good sized campground, some of the best coastal caves in the state for kayaking, miles of hiking trails, and some decent snorkeling.
The reason I thought no one would nail this location is because of the beautiful quality of the water sparkling in the above photograph. Anyone who has spent time swimming at the beaches of Southern California--especially in Los Angeles--will tell you that water clarity is abysmal. And yet here, just an hour's boat ride away on Santa Cruz, the water looks as though it might be located in Mexico, the Philippines, Australia, or somewhere in Greece--all great guesses from some of our well-traveled readers.
Filed under: Where on Earth
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Jim Jul 6th 2007 6:00PM
Wow, first time I've ever won anything. I was pretty chuffed at having worked it out, never having been within 200 miles of it, sat on my sofa here in a rain soaked UK.
My method was this. I looked at the shadow on the walker, and it fell on his front, although there wasn't much shadow in the bay, so I figured it was north facing. Then Neil gave us the clue that it was close to one the world's 20 largest cities. I seemed to recall Neil is LA based, and I figured LA had to be in that list, so I turned to Wikipedia which told me that the LA urban area is in the top 20 (although not LA itself). I then thought about the hour's drive and hour's ferry and figured that it was probably not the Catalinas, but could well be the Channel Islands, as I'd noticed them on a map I was studying some days earlier, as we're off to California in October. So I turned to Google Earth and had a look around, and Potato Harbour jumped out (if you use the tilt function in GE you can just about put yourself in the same position as the photographer). The islet at the west end of the bay is the clincher. Then I put 'Potato Harbour' in to Google Images and the first hit was a more or less identical image. There you go, that's the power of t'internet for you. Probably never get another one right, though.
Jim (feeling in equal measure a bit smug and a bit of a nerd).
Justin Glow Jul 6th 2007 6:34PM
Wow, Jim -- awesome detective skills!
Neil Jul 6th 2007 8:12PM
Jim, you rock! Awesome job narrowing this down. I just assumed that you’d been there, but boy was I wrong. Shadows! I love it. Keep up the good work.