Response to the question, Where is Noah's Ark

The whole of the account of Noah's Ark and the Flood is recorded in Genesis, chapters 6-9. There are a couple of references to the flood or Noah in the New Testament but these do not contribute any information for this discussion.
This account, the flood, leads to a lot of disagreement and controversy among Christians and non-Christians alike. I will talk about that later, for now I will give my opinion to the question proposed by my friend, Mindy.
First, I want to give the description of the ark as stated in the Genesis account in chapter 6. The ark was constructed of cypress wood or what is described as a 'resinous wood' in a second translation. The key idea here is that the ark was constructed of some kind of wood. It was 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet high (approximate measurements). It had a lower, middle, and upper deck with stalls for the animals. The ark was finished to within 18 inches of the top and had a door in the side. The ark was covered with pitch or tar on the inside and outside to seal it against leakage. This was a very large construction project which probably took many years; scripture doesn't tell us how long it took to build the ark.
Jumping ahead to the landing of the ark, scripture tells us the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. The name Ararat is a more modern translation of an earlier name, Urarty, which also had an earlier name. Geographic names change as do political boundaries, but the point to make here is that the term 'mountains' is plural, indicating an entire range of mountains and not just a single peak. Many people believe the ark is resting on Mt. Ararat, which is a single peak and may not always have been called Mt. Ararat. Current scholars believe the ark could have come to rest anywhere in the mountains of Armenia, Iran, or Turkey. Ask 10 different people who have an opinion about the resting place of the ark and you are likely to get up to 10 different answers. I think it is safe to say that with the way geographic names change with time, and conquest changing boundaries and languages, we do not know where the ark came to rest. We may be able to narrow the location down to a few thousand square miles of mountain range, but no better.
Now for my opinion. I don't believe the ark exists anymore. Consider the opportunistic nature of man. When Noah and his family left the ark and began to rebuild their lives, the ark would have provided a ready source of finished and shaped timbers and an easy source of wood. Later in the story it says Noah planted crops and vineyards, which were likely at lower elevations than where the ark came to rest. Noah and his family also lived in tents, so it is unlikely they would have used the wood to build homes, but that doesn't mean they would have no use for the wood. Noah and his family and later generations (God told Noah and his sons to 'multiply and fill the earth') would have cannibalized the ark simply because it was a source of a valuable resource. This 'scavenging' could have taken place over a few hundred or even a couple of thousand years. The people who lived in the area would have known about its location and taken advantage of it. Once the last of the wood was used, it would have been forgotten. This probably happened slowly at first, but once the population began to grow in the region, and the few usable wood resources close at hand were being used up, this 'ark-picking' would have accelerated.
My opinion is problematic in this; the ark would have been at a fairly high elevation and it would have been difficult to move the wood to the lower elevations, but at some point the need would have taken precedence over the difficulty. It is unknown at what elevation the people in the area were settling, but it was probably much lower than where the ark sat because of farming, growing vineyards, raising their herds, climate differences at the lower elevations, etc. There are many reasons people would have lived at the lower elevations, but my best understanding of the region indicates that even at the lower, livable elevations there are few sources of wood. Even though this is just my opinion and I have probably not thought this through as deeply as I could have, I think it is likely close to how things actually happened. The ark got used for it's wood.
Many people disagree with me, and that's ok. It' just my opinion, but it gives us a chance to talk about it. I was glad for the question because it gives me a perfect chance to now talk about the flood; was it global or regional. I will approach this topic in several installments because there is so much to consider.