It’s been just over a month since Google added 12 new US cities to Street View, and yesterday we got new imagery in another 13 cities, and interestingly, a US national park! Here’s some of the highlights, including links straight there:

• Albuquerque, New Mexico
• Anchorage, Alaska
• Austin, Texas
• Cleveland, Ohio
• Fairbanks, Alaska
• Little Rock, Arkansas
• Madison, Wisconsin
• Nashville, Tennessee
• Rockford, Illinois
• Richmond, Virginia
• Spokane, Washington
• St. Petersburg, Florida
• Tampa, Florida

Finally, Google have also added imagery for the few roads that run through Yosemite National Park, California, which enables us to see some pretty stunning scenery.

Here’s El Capitan, a 910 metre vertical rock formation that’s a popular challenge for rock climbers, and some spectacular Giant Redwoods living up to their name!

Read the full story at the Google Lat Long Blog, read more about El Capitan and Giant Redwoods at Wikipedia.

(It’s Island Week 2 here at GSS, which means we’ll mostly be posting about Islands. For about a week.)

On the mighty Mississippi River, Memphis, Tennessee, is Mud Island, which is home to a steamboat museum, restaurants, an outdoor amphitheatre and some nice large type.

Okay, technically Mud Island isn’t actually an island, but rather a small peninsula. However, it does contain a hydraulic scale model of the lower Mississippi recreated in miniature all the way from Cairo, Illinois south to New Orleans!

Which probably makes this the world’s only model of a river on an island (that’s actually a peninsula) in the river that the model is a model of…

Or something.

Read more about Mud Island at Wikipedia. Thanks to dedHED and Nat Case.

There are 21 cities worldwide that have at sometime been nick-named “Athens of the (something)“. However, two of these cities have taken the name even further and built replicas of Athens’ most famous landmark, the Parthenon.

Nashville, Tennessee acquired the nickname “Athens of the South” in the 1850s by the creation of numerous universities and colleges and being the first southern US city to establish a public school system.

So as the centrepiece of the 1897 World’s Fair, Nashville built the World’s only complete, full scale replica of the Parthenon. The building was originally a temporary structure but they liked it so much it was re-built on proper foundations in the 1920s.

Today the Parthenon serves as an art museum and even features plaster-casts of marble sculptures which adorned the original Parthenon (which are presently held in the British Museum).

In the late 1700s many of Edinburgh, Scotland’s public buildings were built in the Greek neo-classical style, giving rise to the nickname “Athens of the North”.

Then, in 1882, construction began on a Parthenon replica named The National Monument as a memorial to those who died in the Napoleonic Wars. You can clearly see that the structure is only half completed, perhaps due to lack of funding, but some say it was an intentional design.

In stark contrast to public feelings of Nashville’s replica, the locals of Edinburgh generally dislike the Parthenon and it has often been described as “Edinburgh’s Disgrace”.

Previously on Google Sightseeing: Ancient Greece.

Wikipedia Links: Parthenon, Nashville and the National Monument, Edinburgh.

Thanks: Taylor Nelson & James Turnbull

At the Memphis-Days Inn At Graceland there’s a big blue guitar (yes, of course it’s a pool - here’s ground-level shots).

And all the way over in Tamworth, New South Wales, Australia, there’s the Big Golden Guitar, which is exactly that - a big gold guitar. There’s a ground-level picture on the official site of the Big Golden Guitar Tourist Centre, which is the location for Australia’s Tamworth Country Music Festival.

You can see previously-featured guitars here at Google Sightseeing, and I recently read about a huge piano-shaped pool in Florida… Can anyone find it?

Thanks to Mary and our resident Australian expert, woowoowoo.

The last Nuclear Power Megapost proved successful so here is another! I’ve been collating all the nuclear power themed entries since then and here are the most interesting of them.

Shoreham Nuclear Power Station

This is a plant that was never completed due to community opposition. In the aftermath of the Three Mile Island accident residents were increasingly worried about proximity to nuclear power stations. Shoreham was never finished because residents argued that if anything did go wrong, the population of Long Island couldn’t be evacuated with only one direction to go (west) and only one major road to take (the Long Island Expressway).

Thanks Chris & Thomas Paul

Sequoyah Nuclear Plant

I know you’ve already done a “Nuclear Power Megapost,” but I just ran across this, and think it’s cool that you can almost see directly down the cooling towers. BTW, it’s TVA’s Sequoyah Nuclear Plant.

Thanks Jay K

Chinon Nuclear Power Plant

This is the nuclear power plant of Chinon, a french town best known for its Cabernet Franc wine, with four very pretty cooling towers churning out steam.

Thanks Julien

Weldon Springs

The Nuclear Waste Adventure Trail and Museum at Weldon Spring, Missouri is where the government opened the Weldon Spring site to the public in 2002. The huge waste tomb spans 45 acres and is seven stories tall.

Thanks Bill

Bohunice Nuclear Power Plant

This is Bohunice nuclear power plant in Slovakia. A proper old-skool soviet era reactor. In February 22, 1977, the reactor suffered a major accident during refueling. Because of its age and old design the plant is currently undergoing a decommissioning process.

Thanks FeroG

Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant

This is the Iranian nuclear power plant under construction near the city of Bushehr. These two plants are one of the reasons that Iran and the west don’t get along. In 1995, Russia signed a contract to supply a light water reactor for the plant. Although the agreement calls for the spent fuel rods to be sent back to Russia for reprocessing, the US has expressed concern that Iran would reprocess the rods itself, in order to obtain plutonium for atomic bombs.

Thanks Paul, Bunsen, Pejvak DehDari & Bubba

Enrico Fermi Nuclear Power Plant

This reactor is named after the first physicist to create a nuclear reactor and is located between Detroit, Michigan and Toledo, Ohio. On October 5, 1966 a 94MWe prototype fast breeder reactor called Fermi-1 suffered a partial nuclear meltdown here. Thankfully no radiation was released off-site, and no one was injured.

Thanks David & Joe

I’m sure there are still plenty more interesting nuclear power sites so keep them coming!

This is the Opryland Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee. Now I think I’ve got this right when I say that the Opryland is the third largest non-casino hotel in the world. Regardless, it’s enormous, with 5 restaurants, 6 eateries, 14 retail stores and 2,881 guest rooms built to accomodate visitors to the world famous Grand Ole Opry, a Saturday night country music radio show, broadcast from the 4,400-seat Grand Ole Opry House which is located just next door.

In our thumbnail you can see the absolutely enormous, climate-controlled glass atria which cover 9 acres of lush indoor gardens, a rotating restaurant, a 44-foot waterfall, and a 400 metre long river… complete with tour boats. The hotel also has its own golf course, and used to have a themepark too, which was closed in 1997 to make way for a 1.2 million square foot shopping mall, Opry Mills. Take note that it costs $10 to park your car at the hotel, but parking at Opry Mills is free…

Just to the west of the shopping mall you can also see the General Jackson Showboat, a paddle boat which takes tours of the area. You can see the bright red paddles quite clearly, but feel free to compare with this photo if you’re unconvinced

Finally, for information junkies, here’s some links. The official Gaylord Opryland site, the Wikipedia page about the hotel, the Grand Ole Opry Wikipedia page, a tour of the interior of the Hotel, and an article on the DuPont site about the construction of the atria.

Thanks to David Hanak, Danielle, Kevin and Brandon.

This is the Acropolis in Athens, Greece. The Acroplois has an incredibly ancient history (described in some detail over at Wikipedia), but today it is best known for the most famous surviving building of Ancient Greece, the Parthenon (which is shown in our thumbnail). The Parthenon has stood here for nearly 2,500 years (Wikipedia page), and there’s lots of other ancient sights at here too, so here’s a map of the area in the the time of Socrates and Plato to compare with.

Here in Edinburgh we’ve got the National Monument, a copy of the Parthenon which was unfortunately never finished (supposedly due to a lack of funds), and is known locally as Edinburgh’s Disgrace (Wikipedia page). There’s no high-res of it yet, but I bet you’ll all be glad to hear that I can see it from my bedroom window

There’s another (way more impressive) copy in Centennial Park, Nashville, but again no high-res I’m afraid

Back to ancient Greece, and just east of the Acropolis you can still see the remaining columns of the Temple Of Olympian Zeus (Wikipedia page).

Thanks to… deep breath… Jean Lorraine, Chris Jernigan, Adam Parker, Bltiz, Matt, ray hollis, Martin Willey, Jim L., Ron Vogel, Roland, Stephen Train, Ruben Vermeersch, Salinga, Sig, Matt, GS, Evan O., Bennet Langlotz, Gut, Ellen van Swieten, Greg Askins, Ian, Ken Arnold, Feng Wu, banic, Boniface, martin e, Serge Lyubomudrov, noknok, Richard Cobbe, Scott Kleihege, Fai Sheng and cacafuego.

This is the Sunsphere in the 1982 World’s Fair Park, Knoxville, Tennessee. It’s a 266 foot high structure, topped with a 74 foot sphere made of bronze-coated reflective glass.

The Sunsphere was featured in the Simpson’s once (Nelson accidentally toppled it), and there’s even a “religion” based around the tower, known as the ‘Church of The Giant Golden Microphone‘.

Thanks: Les Jones, Graeme M, Adrian Likins, Jud White, Terry Foster, Janssen McCormick