The Google Lat Long blog has announced that Google has just added 12 more US cities to their street view coverage, bringing their total coverage to, um.. lots. The new cities added are as follows:

• Albany and Schenectady, NY
• Boise, ID
• Juneau, AK
• Kansas City, MO
• Manchester, NH
• Milwaukee, WI
• Research Triangle Park (Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill), NC
• San Antonio, TX
• Salt Lake City, UT

And presumably just for today (because today is Valentine’s Day in case you’d forgotten), it seems the little Street View guy is standing on a little love heart.

Aww, puke.

Here’s the perfect location in northern Idaho for the world’s largest game of chess. I imagine that pieces to fit the board might set you back a bit though…

Thanks to DDA and Brad.

Bronco Stadium at Boise State University is home to the only blue “Smurf Turf” field in the World. The end-zones say “BOISE STATE BRONCOS”.

Lots of things to see here in Yellowstone National Park, it’s just a pity we can’t see any of the grizzly bears, wolves, or free-ranging herds of bison and elk!

First up is the world famous Old Faithful Geyser, it’s in the middle the concentric walkways you can see in our thumbnail. Old Faithful was so-named because of the reliability of its eruptions, which are currently happening about every 65 minutes, unfortunately it’s not erupting in our picture. Of the 1000 or so geysers in the world, about half of these are in Yellowstone. If you look closely on the walkway, I think you can actually see people watching for an eruption.

Next up are these fantastic waterfalls at the mouth of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, whose yellow-coloured stones gave the park its name.

Finally we have the awesome Grand Prismatic Spring which is the largest hot spring in the United States, and the range is colour shown here is incredible. The blue-white pool to the Northeast is Excelsior Geyser, although it’s been dormant since 1990.

The colours in the spring are produced by different species of thermophilic bacteria that live in the narrow temperature ranges formed as the waters of the hot spring naturally cool farther from the heat source. The reddish bacteria at the outer edge survive in the coolest water with the yellowish and greenish bacteria living in progressively hotter water. The water in the central blue area of the spring is too hot to support any of the bacteria.

Lots and lots more information about Yellowstone National Park is available on Wikipedia, and the official Yellowstone site even has a webcam of Old Faithful .

Thanks to (and this may be our longest thanks list yet!) Brian Ralli, Rick, Tom Gula, Balazs Ganszky, MIke, dx, CosmicPenguin, Chris Prince, Rosewood, Jeff, spaz, Ballard, Brian, JasonRene, Corey Vilhauer, Benjamin, Peter Szabo, Kyle, Tim, Chris Shinkle, Dick Nielson, Wayne, Ray Bellis, Zoltan Horvath, Jens Kilian, mark, J. Gable, Kimon Berlin, Laura Vance, Sparky Treewaller, Matt, Don S, Jared Roberts, Fakus Namus and last but by no means least Rebecca Ray. Thank you everyone!

This 15,000 sq. ft. island is the floating green of hole 14 at the Coeur d’Alene Resort’s golf course in Idaho. The island is automatically moved daily so the distance to the pin varies between 100-175 yards (it’s always a par 3 though).

Thanks: Andrew

Located on the Boise River is the Lucky Peak Dam with its message to the world: “Keep Your Forests Green”. The 340 feet tall dam was completed in 1955 and can be seen from ground level here.

Thanks: Josh H