Wednesday, October 5, 2011

OTBR: An Old Barn in Italy


Latitude 45.640600° N
Longitude 12.704900° 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".



  • in Italy, in a field planted with either peas or beans, near a water tap, an old barn, and a red truck
  • on the Mornington Peninsula south of Melbourne, in the showroom of a Mercedes Benz dealership
  • in Arizona, between the back side of Home Depot and a small barrel cactus wearing a hat underneath a tree
  • down a gravel road in Minnesota, along which are five large poultry buildings, the longest ones about 230 meters long
  • in Australia, in a classroom of the Northern School for Autism
  • on a fairway of the Twin Peaks Golf Course in Longmont, Colorado
  • in the southbound left lane of I-35 south of Des Moines, Iowa, reported from the parking lot of Two Saints winery
  • in the westbound lane of Oregon Highway 126 close enough to the McKenzie River, hidden by trees, that a person in a boat might be near scoring range
  • deep in the Virginia woods almost a half mile from any public road
  • in a red maize (sorghum) field in the completely flat and really dull central Nebraska corridor
  • in the UK, in a field off a blocked off road called Dark Entry on the outskirts of Linlithgow, along a path that starts just before a signpost that says that it was the birthplace of Mary Queen of Scots
  • inaccessible in the Valentine National Wildlife Refuge of the "Sandhills" of Nebraska
  • in shallow water off the beach on the North Carolina Outer Banks
  • and in the water off the beach near Italy's Naxos Beach Resort ("we started too late and were blocked by locked gates around the resort property - we couldn't get out!")

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