Longitude: W 105° 14.298
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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 (not actually) last month that are "off the blue roads".
- in Boulder, Colorado, along a paved walking/biking path with cottonwoods and a large lake on one side and an open field with a large number of black-tailed prairie dogs on the other
- on the northern California coast, in thick scrubby bushes near a vista point of the Russia River where it meets the sea
- in Minnesota, near the Rum River, beyond a gateway with tall side posts and a horizontal member across the top, marking the end of the gravel public road
- in the southeast Melbourne suburb of Keysborough, opposite the Cussons factory, manufacturers of soap products, surrounded by lots of light industry, warehouses and factories
- along a rural road in Illinois that had soybean fields on either side
- in the back corner of a USPS parking lot in Concord, New Hampshire
- just beyond the gates of Ledgewood Acres in Milton, New Hampshire ("Ledgewood Acres Private Drive", "Posted Private Property", "Warning Security Cameras In Use")
- in trees along the stream in Maryland's Cromwell Valley Park, originally a large dairy farm called Sherwood Farm
- in Pennsylvania, past the Three Mile Island nuclear plant, down a dirt lane through corn fields, in the woods
- in Arizona just off I40 between Needles and Kingman ("Not much to see but high desert, and mountains way in the distance.")
- west of Mount Macedon in Australia, near the intersection of Tylden-Woodend Road and Chanters Lane, in grazing land with undulating, well-grassed paddocks
- south of Chicago, in a small cluster of homes that appears to have been built in a grove of trees with the directive to "leave as many of the mature trees as possible" while still building gorgeous modern homes
- in Virginia, in a marshy area past corn and bean fields, woods, and wetlands ("I'm glad I wore grubby pants today, because I spent part of the time plodding through muck up to my ankles")
- a couple of blocks from the ocean in Norfolk, Virginia, beyond the end of the road at the side of a muddy little lake surrounded by two-story houses
- in Wisconsin, east of Minneapolis, on the border between a hay field to the north and a soybean field to the south
- in Arizona, in a small meadowy area in a large pine forest, just north of Old Walnut Canyon Road, the old route to the National Monument
- out of reach near the California coast in Port Hueneme, on land owned by The Nature Conservancy, now closed because it's adjacent to a toxic waste site resulting from operations of a metal recycling facility years ago
- on a narrow one-lane road that twists through a redwood forest and then opens up into an oak wood near the zero point in the Santa Cruz Mountains just north of Watsonville, California
- and in rural Illinois, near a very weathered old barn with some boards missing from the sides and a piece of roof missing ("But it was still standing tall and was looking good.")
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