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Tag: rocks

Puzzle: Buzzard’s Roost, Fall Creek Falls

Buzzard's roost, med
Size: 1000 pieces
Dimensions: 67.95 cm x 48.1 cm
Producer: Mega Puzzles, Vibrant series, 2013, No. 51420ABN, A28103LP
Artist: Very unfortunately, Mega Puzzles prints a copyright for the entire series with several names of the artists (as opposed to the name of a single photographer who owns a particular featured image), and even through searching I was not able to determine which artist took this photo. If you have that information, please let me know.
Original: photo

Puzzle: Not a very trivial, but a pleasant puzzle to do. The pieces fit together well, and that removes quite a bit of ambiguity, despite many regions with similar colours. I have started with the tree trunks in the top right, the boundary between the rocks and the trees in the top left, the black cracks and shadows among the rocks, and the red rock patches. From that point on, brighter green and bluish-grey rocks can be completed with the help of black shadows under the smaller ridges. Blue and green small trees in the top left are distinct enough from the dark green bushes on the right, and the darker grey area in the bottom right corner can easily be distinguished as well.

Notes: Fall Creek Falls, a 256-foot (78 m) plunge waterfall located just west of the creek’s confluence with Cane Creek. A short trail leads from the parking lot atop the plateau down to the base of the gorge, giving access to the waterfall’s plungepool. Buzzard’s Roost is a cliff located near Millikan’s Overlook. [Wiki]

Puzzle: Old Mill

Old mill, med
Size: 1000 pieces
Dimensions: 73 cm x 48.57 cm
Producer: Sure-Lox, The Canadian Group

Puzzle: A serene puzzle, not very challenging. The bridge, the waterfall, the flowers in the bottom left corner, the mill building, and the rocks are good places to start. The tree trunks provide vertical guides, the dark area with the wheel at the bottom of the building is distinct, and the rest of the grass, forest, and sky pieces can be filled in without much trouble.

Notes: A watermill is a structure that uses a water wheel or turbine to drive a mechanical process such as flour, lumber or textile production, or metal shaping (rolling, grinding or wire drawing).

Typically, water is diverted from a river or impoundment or mill pond to a turbine or water wheel, along a channel or pipe (variously known as a flume, head race, mill race, leat, leet, lade (Scots) or penstock). The force of the water’s movement drives the blades of a wheel or turbine, which in turn rotates an axle that drives the mill’s other machinery. Water leaving the wheel or turbine is drained through a tail race, but this channel may also be the head race of yet another wheel, turbine or mill. The passage of water is controlled by sluice gates that allow maintenance and some measure of flood control; large mill complexes may have dozens of sluices controlling complicated interconnected races that feed multiple buildings and industrial processes. [Wiki]

Puzzle: Drakensberg Mountains


Size: 1000 pieces
Dimensions: 73cm x 48.5cm
Producer: Sure-Lox, The Canadian Group
Notes: The Drakensberg (“the Dragon Mountains”) is the highest mountain range in Southern Africa, rising to 3,482 metres in height. In Zulu, it is referred to as uKhahlamba (“barrier of spears”), and in Sesotho as Maluti (also spelled Maloti). Its geological history lends it a distinctive character amongst the mountain ranges of the world. Geologically, the range resembles the Simien Mountains of Ethiopia.

The mountains are capped by a layer of basalt approximately 1,400 meters thick, with sandstone lower down, resulting in a combination of steep-sided blocks and pinnacles.

The high treeless peaks of the Drakensberg (from 2,500 m upwards) have been described by the World Wildlife Fund as the Drakensberg alti-montane grasslands and woodlands ecoregion. These steep slopes are the most southerly high mountains in Africa, and being further from the equator provide cooler habitats at lower elevations than most mountain ranges on the continent. The high rainfall generates many mountain streams and rivers, including the sources of the Orange River, southern Africa’s longest, and the Tugela River. These mountains also have the world’s second-highest waterfall, the Tugela Falls (Thukela Falls), which has a total drop of 947 metres. The rivers that run from the Drakensberg are an essential resource for South Africa’s economy, providing water for the industrial provinces of Mpumalanga and Gauteng, which contains the city of Johannesburg. [Wiki]

Puzzle: Horseshoe Bend, Arizona


Size: 1000 pieces
Dimensions: 73cm x 48.5cm
Producer: The Canadian Group, Sure-Lox, Impressions
Notes: Horseshoe Bend is the name for a horseshoe-shaped meander of the Colorado River located near the town of Page, Arizona, in the United States. The bend is locally known as “King Bend.” It is located 8.7 km downstream from the Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell within Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, about 6 km southwest of Page. [Wiki]

A horseshoe is a U-shaped item made of metal or of modern synthetic materials, nailed or glued to the hooves of horses and some other draught animals. Like a shoe on a human, it is used to protect the animal’s feet from wear and tear. Professional horseshoers, also called farriers or blacksmiths (more commonly used in the UK), attach horseshoes on the palmar surface of the hoof, usually by nailing through the insensitive hoof wall, which is anatomically similar to the human toenail, though much larger and thicker. [Wiki]

Puzzle: Coyote Gulch, Utah, USA


Size: 500 pieces
Dimensions: 48.26 cm x 35.56 cm
Producer: The Canadian Group, Sure-Lox, Churches and Cathedral series
Notes: Coyote Gulch is a tributary of the Escalante River, located in Garfield and Kane Counties in southern Utah, in the western United States. Over 40 km long, it exhibits many of the geologic features found in the Canyons of the Escalante, including high vertical canyon walls, narrow slot canyons, domes, arches, and natural bridges.

The headwaters of Coyote Gulch have their origins along a 22 km segment of the Straight Cliffs, the eastern edge of the Kaiparowits Plateau. These intermittent streams merge to form larger branches, including Dry Fork, Big Hollow, the main branch of Coyote Gulch, and Hurricane Wash. The combined flow from these branches have carved a canyon up to 300 m deep into sandstone layers, before meeting the main channel of the Escalante River. [Wiki]

Puzzle: Purple Sea


Size: 1000 pieces
Producer: Golden, Royale
Notes: A sea generally refers to a large body of salt water, but the term is used in other contexts as well. Most commonly, the term refers to a large expanse of saline water connected with an ocean, and is commonly used as a synonym for ocean. It is also used sometimes to describe a large saline lake that lacks a natural outlet, such as the Caspian Sea.

Sunset or sundown is the daily disappearance of the Sun below the horizon in the west as a result of Earth’s rotation. The time of sunset is defined in astronomy as the moment the trailing edge of the Sun’s disk disappears below the horizon in the west. The ray path of light from the setting Sun is highly distorted near the horizon because of atmospheric refraction, making sunset appear to occur when the Sun’s disk is already about one diameter below the horizon. Sunset is distinct from dusk, which is the moment at which darkness falls, which occurs when the Sun is approximately eighteen degrees below the horizon. The period between sunset and dusk is called twilight. [Wiki]