Where Is This?

[Lamplighter]

Originally Posted by classicman

Still missing?

Classic, you are certainly on the right track.
The bear statue I posted was also stolen by some kids,
but their Dad found out and made them confess.
...

My pic was of a statue in honor of the man who wrote stories,
and this one was picked up by Disney and made into a well known movie.

Here is a different view of the same statue in the park in Wilsonville, OR.



Now, my reason for posting is that one day, my wife and I were driving into the park,
and we saw this statue from the back side, as in my original post.
My wife and I turned to one another and said at the same time.

" Did you see that Pissing Bear "

And that's what we have called the statue, the park and the neighborhood ever since.

[Gravdigr]

[glatt]

This should be easy to find because of all the labels I left in there, but where is this?

And for extra bonus points, why on earth did they build the road like this?

[glatt]

By the way, I just merged the two "Where is this?" threads. It was causing a little confusion (for me) which one was the correct one. The posts still flow almost seamlessly with this merge, and you probably wouldn't have noticed the merge if I hadn't made this post.

[Carruthers]

Custer State Park SD.

I've been there!

[Lamplighter]

And for extra bonus points, why on earth did they build the road like this?

My first guess it has something to do with the "big rigs" meeting one another on the sharp curves to/from the Mt Rushmore campground.

My second is the steeper terrains of the "old road" became impassible in winter, so a bridge was build for a "new road".

[glatt]

Here is an annotated version of the road.


Traffic joins together in the same direction at one point on the same road to get through this:

[glatt]

It's a park, so they put a road through the gap instead of just going around the rock outcropping because it's a cool feature to see. But the gap is too narrow for two-way traffic, and there is a blind curve on either side of the gap, so cars don't see each other until it's too late for an inattentive driver to yield to whichever direction has the right of way. So road engineers made an elaborate loop-dee-loop to get all traffic to go through the gap in the same direction.

They could have gone around the gap and saved a lot of effort and money, but in a park, it's about pleasure and scenery, not practicality.

[xoxoxoBruce]

You're right about inattentive drivers, which are far more dangerous than bear, bison or moose.

[Gravdigr]

Cool.

[Gravdigr]

Whir dis be at? (Braghint: I found it in less than 60 seconds, without cheating.)

[glatt]

It would be easier if your picture wasn't backwards. :p

I kept coming up with Tehachapi Loop, but that's a clockwise looping under itself loop, and yours is a counterclockwise looping under. But closer inspections shows your picture is backwards. It's Tehachapi Loop in California.

[Gravdigr]

[glatt]

And I learned that the main reason for the loop is just to gain some elevation before going through a pass. I guess there was no other convenient locations to build what is essentially a ramp, so they put that loop in.

[Happy Monkey]

Not famous... though I've posted about it before.