Dotting the landscape here in Mountainville, New York, is a collection of bizarre shapes and interesting shadows. This is actually a huge outdoor sculpture garden called the Storm King Art Center.

Founded in 1960 by Ralph E. Ogden as a gallery for Hudson River School painters, today the 202 hectares (500 acres) of landscaped lawns, fields and woodlands are home to hundreds of sculptures.

New York resident sculptor Mark di Suvero has several pieces here, such as Mozart’s Birthday and Mother Peace (more info and pictures are available at the Storm King site).

Mother Peace, 1970

Di Suvero was in construction as a young man, but after a serious accident started using an arc welder to create large outdoor sculptures incorporating scrap metal and structural steel – like the enormous Pyramidian (this photo at Flickr gives a good sense of scale).

Pyramidian, 1970

Internationally renowned Polish sculptor Magdalena Abakanowicz created the seemingly accurately titled “Sarcophagi in Glass Houses” that we can see here (more info and ground-level pic).

Sarcophagi in Glass Houses, 1989

Another American, David von Schlegell, is responsible for several pieces on permanent display here titled “Untitled”, including this one, “Untitled” (ground level picture).

Unititled, 1969

Not wanting to be left out, the UK is represented by the brilliant Andy Goldsworthy, whose 694 metre (2,278 foot) long Storm King Wall can be seen falling into the lake, and emerging from the other side to take a meandering path through the trees (more info and ground-level photo).

Storm King Wall, 1998

There are many other recognisable artworks dotted about the grounds, including Adam by Alexander Liberman and Free Ride Home by Kenneth Snelson, as well as others that I haven’t been able to find any information about, like this large boat-like thing perched on a small island, or this mish-mash of what looks like huge red tubes.

The Wikipedia page on Storm King is short but to-the-point, whilst the official site would have to try very hard to be any more rambling and wordy. There’s a Flickr Pool with some good images too.

Thanks to Ryan, Wayne Citrin and Adrian Likins.

Today we’re extremely proud to be launching three new translations of Google Sightseeing: Dutch, German and Spanish!

These three new blogs join our successful existing translations of French and Italian, so you can now come sightseeing around Google Earth with us in 6 different languages.

We have three new authors who will be translating all the best posts from the English language GSS for their own languages, as well as posting some of their own language specific stuff as well.

See our very first Press Release for more details (which is, naturally, available in 6 languages).

Eventually we’d like Google Sightseeing to be available to everyone, so we plan to expand into even more languages in the future – if you’re fluent in another language (especially any of the languages offered by Google Earth) and would like to have your own Google Sightseeing blog then please get in touch.

Driving across the frozen Amur River between Russian and China we can see a couple of trucks – driven by the fearless and legendary Ice Road Truckers!

Although it seems ludicrous, building “Ice Roads” over lakes, rivers or seas, is at times preferable to carving a road on land, as you can get long continuous straights on the ice, which hilly tree-covered land just doesn’t offer. However in this case it appears to be the only existing way across the river.

Driving across frozen water in a 2 tonne truck is of course slightly dangerous. Depending on the country, the ice only needs to be about 20cm thick for authorities to allow trucks onto the surface, and speeds may be limited to a painfully slow 16mph. Luckily our particular truckers don’t have far to go, unlike the men who drive the 568 kilometre Tibbitt to Contwoyto Winter Road each year.

Ice road truckers were made famous by the TV show of the same name, and the green light has apparently been given to make a fictional film based on the series in 2008. I’ve not seen the TV show, but I hear it’s much more exciting than boring footage of lonely truckers driving at 16mph across vast empty frozen lakes.

Read more about ice roads at Wikipedia.

Thanks to pooms.

Disaster has struck at a house in the small town of Gibson, Arkansas, as a home is engulfed in flames. There are several fire engines on the scene, but it’s probably too late to save the building since the flames are clearly visible inside the walls and on the roof.

Fire-fighters are perched on top of one of the engines, and look to be spraying water at the other side of the house from where the flames are, so it could be that they are trying to save another building from catching fire – perhaps this unfinished house just behind it?

The Street View car looks to have gone to a lot of effort to capture the fire – despite being stopped in its tracks by various roadblocks, it still manages to cover most of the roads – even when a fire engine blocks its path!

From the way the pictures were taken, it looks like the car has had to continually manoeuvre to avoid getting in the way of the emergency services, or driving on the fire hose that stretches all the way down the street.

Unfortunately I could find no reference to the fire on the web, but sincerely hope that nobody was harmed by it.

Thanks: Flashmojo (who claims he can actually be seen looking at the fire over a nearby fence!)

If you’ve been wondering why half of the Internet had gone quiet, then (like us) you might not have realised that today is the 4th of July, and that means it’s America’s Independence Day.

The holiday marks the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776 – which is today held at the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, D.C..

Buy what does the National archive store in those white boxes on the roof?

All over America people are celebrating Independence Day with fireworks, parades, barbecues and public displays of patriotism: such as this guy dressed like Uncle Sam in Austin, Texas.

Not wanting to be left out of the party, the Street View Icon Guy has dressed up for the occasion too!

Read the full history of the holiday on Wikipedia.