Longitude: 11.999700° E
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".
- off a dirt track in California, in the middle of an immense amount of trash spread all over the place -- broken pallets, appliances, bags full, bags torn, lots of paper and cardboard
- inside very small tan and brown home in California, with a microwave oven sitting on the sidewalk in front with a hand-lettered "Free. Works" sign taped to it
- in Maryland, at the end of Sunhigh Place, one of a myriad short dead end streets in the very pleasant residential neighborhood of attractive two-story homes on modest lots with large trees
- in Italy, on the Via Sette Ponti a few km from Arezzo, inside the fence of what looked to be an unused two story brick villa
- in North Carolina, just west of the parking lot of the Purlear Church, in a field where a very upset bird is squawking and apparently defending a nest
- on a very steep slope of San Francisco's San Bruno Mountain State Park, straight down what looks like an abandoned fire trail
- in a forest in Germany, close to a hunters seat, a pond, some kind of Bavarian billabong, and a field of rapeseed, all blooming in very bright yellow and smelling great
- in an unfenced harvested cornfield in Nebraska ("The field was surprisingly dry and probably will be planted in next couple of weeks.")
- alongside a large orchard of almond trees in California ("I love almonds, in almost any form: raw, roasted, smoked, candied, you name it.")
- in a tree nursery behind a farmhouse just of Interstate Highway 55 in Illinois
- near Peacock Siding, Queensland, Australia, in a field of sugar cane, 3m high, ready for harvesting
- in Utah near an airstrip that probably is not used a lot ("It is VERY rural and the spot is probably close to 50 miles from a MacDonald's, if that is how to measure rural vs urban.)
- in the middle of Washington's Camano Island, off a road between dense woods, swampy with ferns and perhaps some skunk cabbage, and an overgrown field that looked like it had not been touched in decades
- in western New York, near the cart bridge going over the creek of the golf course of the Byrncliff Resort & Conference Center
- near a road that is part of Dinosaur National Monument in Colorado
- at Colorado's Interstate Highway 225 off-ramp to Parker near a light-rail station
- on a hillside above the softball fields of the Oregon Institute of Technology in Klamath Falls
- off the beaten tourist path in Paris, behind a church ("We arrived as people were streaming in for the Sunday Service, with choir boys dressed in white robes milling around at the door")
- among flowering saguaros and a mobile home graveyard with about 5 acre spacing on the far side of the Tucson Mountains
- and over the tall walls and in Chicago's Rosehill Cemetery (on the street was an ironic "No Parking" sign)
No comments:
Post a Comment