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National Park Mystery Spot 37 Revealed: The Italian Word for Large is Grande

The National Park Mystery Spot 37 puzzle required you to identify the National Park System unit indicated by the clues listed below.

"Tall is too small," the barista said,
"Starbucks  recommends the medium instead. "

What Hoover hammered out of the park
Was a curveball with a generous arc.

The Venus you see through your naked eye's lense
Shines like a star that has no friends.

           

The answer is Big Bend National Park .  Tucked within a great bend in the Rio Grande River in the Lone Star state (Texas), this 1,252 square- mile park on the Mexican border attracts nearly 400,000 visitors a year to a landscape offering a wealth of recreational choices in a diversified landscape of open desert, scenic mountains, deep canyons, and rushing river water.

Here is how the clues lead you to the answer.

A "generous arc" is a big bend.  Curve is a synonym for bend. It may have helped to know that a curveball of the traditional variety (not a slider or cutter) is often called a "bender."

When the Starbucks barista serves you a coffee concoction in a medium-sized container, s/he is serving you a drink in a Grande cup. If you order a Tall you'll get the smallest-sized cup.

A "star with no friends" is a lone star.

An even dozen readers figured this one out. Congratulations to: ed-123, celbert, Beachie, Ellen, djjeffrey100, OutInTheStiks, Eric Nelson, desk-bound parky, tomp2, Eric, ILoveRoadTrips, and Joy.  All are eligible for our monthly prize drawing.

Comments

Darn!  I thought about Big Bend NP and then rejected that idea for some reason!  Next time...


We'll accept that excuse at face value, viewmtn, even though the needle on my weaselspeak meter is twitching.  Anyway, you are already qualified for the monthly drawing by virtue of your success with Mystery Photo 45, a puzzle that only you and two other readers were able to solve. 


Well heck...I kept focusing on Arizona because someone guessed Casa Grande and it was hinted that they were close. I thought it meant geographically close. I thought of parks along the Rio Grande but dismissed them cause they weren't close to Casa Grande...oh silly me. Good thing I'm going on a vacation so I can rest up for the next mystery spot.


The Quizmeister never meant to imply that the Casa Grande guess was "close," only that a guess like that indicated that the person who made the guess was on the right trail by having recognized the significance of the term Grande (as in Rio Grande River, which forms one border of Big Bend National Park ).  For the record, this is what the Quizmeister wrote:

Sorry, but it's not Casa Grande Ruins. But if you were a bird dog, we'd
notice that your tail is wagging and you've got your nose lifted into
the wind.


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