Interesting Tourist places and things

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The Bottle Tree Ranch of Elmer Long





The Bottle Tree Ranch created by Elmer Long offers one of the most strangest sight along Route 66 in California’s Mojave County.



When Elmer was a kid, he used to travel through the desert, with his dad, who would collect any objects they found, and painstakingly keep notes about their location. After Elmer’s dad died, he was left with a sizable collection of colorful bottles, but he had no idea what to do with it. One day Elmer put some of the bottles on a wooden post and created the first bottle tree. The next morning when the sun rose and shone through the colored bottles, he was strangely mesmerize. He knew what to do with the bottles. Elmer Long started the Bottle Tree Ranch in 2000, and since then has created over 200 bottle trees.

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Port Lockroy Museum and Post Office in Antarctica




Port Lockroy is a natural harbour on the Antarctic Peninsula of the British Antarctic Territory. Originally discovered in 1903 by a French Antarctic expedition, the port was named 'Port LaCroix' after Edouard LaCroix who helped finance the expedition. Over the years Port Lockroy found use as an anchorage by whalers and in 1944 became 'British Base A', the first of the more than 20 eventual British bases established in Antarctica.



After the close of World War II it functioned as a civilian research outpost and was eventually shut down in 1962. It sat abandoned until a British team renovated the historical site and opened it as a monument and museum in 1996. This base is now restored as a historic site which has a gift shop and the only public post office on the Antarctic peninula.



Port Lockroy museum and post office is operated by the United Kingdom Antarctic Heritage Trust and proceeds from the small souvenir shop fund the upkeep of the site and other historic sites and monuments in Antarctica.

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The Strange Money Trees of England


When you were a kid, you probably often heard your mother chiding that “money doesn't grow on trees” in an attempt to curb your expensive demands. If only you knew, you could have told her that money, in fact, does grow on trees. At least in England they do.



There are places in England where you can find trees with coins hammered and bent into the bark. Nobody knows for sure why people pushed coins into the trees. Some believe it brings good luck. Others believe that the amount of coins pushed in by an individual may result in them producing the same amount of children.



Money trees can be found all over Britain.

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Pando, the Single Largest Living Organism on Earth



Pando or The Trembling Giant is an enormous grove of Quaking Aspen that is an entire forest out of a single organism. This colony of a single male Quaking Aspen is located in the Fishlake National Forest in Utah, in the US. Each of 47,000 or so trees in the grove are genetically identical and has been determined to be part of a single living organism all sharing a single massive underground root system. Pando is truly massive – it covers an area of 43 hectares, weighs 6,000 tonnes and is more than 80,000 years old.



Quaking aspen reproduces via a process called suckering. An individual stem can send out lateral roots that, under the right conditions, send up other erect stems which look just like individual trees but rather clones of single tree.



Pando’s age is often debated. Some experts speculate that less well-studied Quaking Aspens elsewhere in the world could extend more than 80 hectares and be one million years old. Others estimates puts Pando's age closer to 1 million years.

Pando was discovered by Burton V. Barnes of the University of Michigan in the 1970s. Barnes had described Pando as a single organism. In 1992 the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development called Pando the world's most massive organism.

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Mysterious Morning Glory Cloud Formation



The Morning Glory cloud is a rare meteorological phenomenon observed in Northern Australia's Gulf of Carpentaria. A Morning Glory cloud is a roll cloud that can be up to 1000 kilometers long, 1 to 2 kilometers high, and can move at speeds up to 60 kilometers per hour. The Morning Glory is often accompanied by sudden wind squalls, intense low-level wind shear, a rapid increase in the vertical displacement of air parcels, and a sharp pressure jump at the surface. In the front of the cloud, there is strong vertical motion that transports air up through the cloud and creates the rolling appearance, while the air in the middle and rear of the cloud becomes turbulent and sinks.

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World’s Largest Shipyard Grave at Nouadhibou





The city of Nouadhibou is the second largest city in Mauritania and serves as the country's commercial center. The port of Nouadhibou is the final resting place of over 300 ships which were abandoned by their owners. These ships rusting in the shallow waters has given the port of Nouadhibou the notorious name of being the world’s largest ship graveyard. Unlike the en masse arrival of ships at Mallows Bay, here the number of craft has built up over time, as corrupt officials accepted bribes from boat owners to allow them to dump their vessels in the area.



The phenomenon started in the 80's after the nationalization of the Mauritanian fishing industry, numerous uneconomical ships were simply abandoned there. Discarding a ship is quite expensive for a company, so during the decades, lots of unwanted ships ended up in the Harbour of Nouadibou.



A few years ago, the situation was so out of control, that even Mauritanians started to worry. Nowadays there’s a project from the European Union to refloat all these junk and take them away, or destroy the remaining wrecks.

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The Flat Streets of San Francisco



The city of San Francisco is famous for it's hills and impossibly inclined streets. It would be easier to park a car and not have to curb the wheels. We would not have runaway vehicles and tennis balls.



On the other hand, we would not have cable cars, beautiful views and quaint neighborhoods. We would not have the many movies and postcard images to view. In fact, San Francisco would not be San
Francisco.







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