National Park Mystery Spot 30 Revealed: The Rhyming Road Takes You There

Submitted by Bob Janiskee on November 3, 2011 - 2:59am

You were given these clues to identify Mystery Spot 30, a place in a unit of the National Park System:

What rhyming road takes you coast to coast?

What did the six hundred famously ride into?

Why did Roy tell the captain "You're gonna need a bigger boat"?

Which antonym of never is not always?

The answer is Shark Valley in Florida's Everglades National Park.

Kudos to Aron, who was the first (7:33 AM) to identify the mystery spot. Also providing the correct answer to this puzzler were Eric, Jason, Eric Nelson, RangerLady, Kat, and y_p_w. Another good showing. I'm impressed.

Here is how the clues lead you to the answer.

The 1975 movie Jaws is considered one of the greatest films ever made. In one memorable scene, the character played by actor Roy Scheider is stunned to see a white shark of enormous size appear at the stern of the boat he's in. He then deadpans to the boat's captain, a skilled hunter of sharks, "You're gonna need a bigger boat." In 2005, this line occupied the 35th spot in the American Film Institute's list of the Top 100 Movie Quotes.

A gallant but futile British cavalry charge at the Battle of Balaclava (Crimean War, 1854) prompted Alfred Lord Tennyson to write one of the most famous of all military poems, The Charge of the Light Brigade.

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
'Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns' he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Tennyson's "valley of Death" appears to correlate with "the valley of the shadow of Death" from the 23rd Psalm.

Shark Valley is located on the Tamiami Trail, an east-west highway extending from Tampa on the Gulf Coast to Miami-Dade County on the Atlantic Coast. The Tamiami (pronounced tammy-ammy, so it rhymes) forms the northern border of Everglades National Park.

There are a several antonyms for never -- always and ever/forever. Ever/forever, as in Everglades, is the one that is not always.

Comments

Submitted by Blackfeet Dreamer on November 3, 2011 - 12:32pm.

Nice one! I was stuck with "Mother Death, Rode Jaws Forever"!

Submitted by y_p_w on November 3, 2011 - 1:37pm.

I was thinking Shark Valley for a while, but I got tripped up by the first two and bonus questions.

You realize that most people will think of coast to coast as Atlantic to Pacific coasts. Then I started thinking it could be Florida where coast to coast is pretty short. I guessed the answer first, then filled in the rest. I wasn't that well versed on that poem, but I was thinking of how valley would correlate to six hundred.

I was told that there's a group of canals in Shark Valley that spell out LIFE.

Submitted by Bob Janiskee on November 3, 2011 - 1:44pm.

Canals that spell out "LIFE"? First time I've heard that one. If true, I'd certainly like to hear more about it.

Submitted by RangerLady on November 3, 2011 - 3:38pm.

I was stuck for awhile too. I researched NPS sites along Route 66 for hours before it dawned on me that it doesn't go from coast to coast. And I worked at Shark Valley for 3 years! Shame on me for being slow....Can I use the fact that I just got back from vacation as an excuse?

Submitted by Bob Janiskee on November 3, 2011 - 6:17pm.

I dunno, RangerLady; "just got back from vacation" sounds like weaselspeak to me. :o)

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