Longitude: E 123° 56.328
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A child on a road trip with his family asks, "Where are we?" and the father answers, "Let's check the map. We're off the blue roads [the Interstate Highways marked in blue on the road atlas]. We're off the red roads [the US and state highways]. We're off the black roads [the county highways]. I think we're off the map altogether." It was always my dream to be off the map altogether.
After the jump, a few of the random places (and I mean random literally) that I visited vicariously last month that are "off the blue roads".
- in sparse saltbush on the Eyre Highway in Australia's Nullarbor Plain near the Great Australian Bight
- out in nowhere ranch country of Kansas, in rough pasture surrounded by 3-strand electrified fence
- northeast of Melbourne, in a lush paddock next to a dam
- in Colorado, across the road from an open field graced with local art, including a bizarre blue sunflower/wind mill
- in Tucson, in a rock-faced house with a round tile-covered parapet, surrounded by a stone wall with a very large custom black iron gate
- in Maryland, in a two story house with white siding above brick and a small retaining wall along the sidewalk from the driveway to the front door
- outside Santa Fe, in a house with a large horse corral with an adobe wall with the typical arch over a gate and a bell in the apex of the arch
- in Croatia, in the yard of a store selling building materials
- in Virginia, in the right-turn lane going into the parking lot for Yorktown Middle School
- in Virginia, down narrow and winding roads, going uphill and down, in the woods next to a house set well back into the trees
- in Estonia, in the corner of the yard around a farm-house in the picturesque village of Mustla
- in Kansas, on the road over the dam that forms Tuttle Creek Lake ("unlike unfortunate California, this reservoir is mostly full")
- in an open field in Arizona, where the vertical wind tunnel of SkyVenture Arizona (a great place to skydive indoors) is just visible to the west
- in an unharvested corn field in Iowa, surrounded by a large wind farm
- unreachable way out in the very low land along Maryland's Nanticoke River ("there are lots of reeds growing in the mucky ground, with numerous little channels running through the area")
- in an orchard ("I think") next to a big villa in Germany, with a castle ("or something) on the right
- in South Africa, on a construction site in the picturesque village of Kosmos located on the shores of Hartebeespoort Dam
- in Hemel Hempstead, England, outside the Cranford Home for elderly people, which is right next door to the Yew Tree School
- on a hill covered with rocks in the Sloan Canyon National Conservation Area just south of Henderson, Nevada, offering an awesome view of the Las Vegas skyline
- on a farm road that runs between a well-established vineyard and a recently plowed field about fifteen miles from Sacramento
- in Colorado, very near two cell towers which have been disguised as pine trees
- near Euskirchen, Germany, over a bridge over a creek, behind a copse ("you have really wide view over the Zülpicher Bördelandschaft; on the left, the Zuckerfabrik was smoking -- and stinking, I tell you!")
- and in a nondescript middle-income suburban subdivision of Bolingbrook, Illinois, in a yard decked out with the fall foliage, Halloween-ish because of the bright blood-red leaves
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