OTBR: First Jaunt on the New Xmas Snowshoes

Latitude: 44.351700° N
Longitude: 71.729896° W

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 a foggy paddock in Victoria, Australia, scored on a rainy New Year's Day
  
• next to a double Soaptree Yucca in Arizona, scored on an "absolutely beautiful" New Year's Day
  
• in a field next to a farm near Obergeislbach, Germany, with the road to the farm uphill and covered with ice and the air windy and chilly
  
• in the truck loading area of a now empty warehouse/distribution facility outside of Chicago ("evidently the economic times had hit this plant")
  
• on a plot of California desert, with streets graded down into the soil and street signs posted at the corners but no actual construction begun ("I assume that the housing collapse in California stalled any planned work.")
  
• in the Doubletree Hotel complex in Tucson, Arizona, a place that holds defensive driving courses for unnamed drivers unlucky enough to be captured in their dashmobiles by speed cameras
  
• in California's Charmlee Nature Park, once a working cattle ranch, now a park with trails lined with sagebrush, with a little ceanothus, chamise and laurel sumac for variety
  
• in a dense brushy area of a house in Maryland with a manicured garden with numerous statuary, a wooden bridge and entry arbor and a beautifully restored 1930s green and white Buick or Pontiac in the driveway
  
• in a graveyard near Vallauris, France, surrounded by a fence with no gate ("although there must be one somewhere!")
  
• in a snow-covered field close to the Kuressaare-Kuivastu road in Estonia
  
• in a snow-covered field in Minnesota ("I broke through the crust on almost every step. I must get some snowshoes.")
  
• in a snow-covered field in Vermont ("1st jaunt on the new Xmas snowshoes! Got it!")
  
• and in a flat paddock in Victoria, Australia ("Well, it was a shocker of a day! 44 degrees Celsius and the car's air-conditioning was feeling it just as we were. We stopped the car at 63 metres on the side of Shepherd Rd and I was grateful that I didn't have to go out into the blazing sun.")