OTBR: The Parthenon in Nashville

Latitude: 36.1450 N
Longitude: 86.8100 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".

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• in Nashville, next to the Vanderbilt University football stadium and 600 meters from the replica of the Parthenon
  
• in Dublin, California, on Tassajara Creek trail, an extra-wide sidewalk separated from the street by a narrow strip of grass
  
• in Oregon, in flat juniper forest with sandy soil, gnarled trees, and a few lava rock outcrops, just east of the Huntington Wagon Road, an historically important north-south route blazed in 1845
  
• in New Zealand, in a patch of grass next to the Masterton Tennis Centre car park
  
• in a complex of tennis courts of the Twin Creeks Residential and Country Club in New South Wales
  
• in an easy-to-walk forest near a motocross track in Finland
  
• in Austria, near a wood and some houses where, 50 years ago, was a coal mine "Seegraben"
  
• in Maryland, near a barn and a petting zoo, part of Boucher's Farm
  
• in a tilled field on the edge of Oregon's Juniper Acres, a subdivision of 500 10-acre lots with poor roads and no services, 15 km from the nearest general store
  
• in Missouri, down a gravel road, past a small pond and up the other side where it turns into the back yard of a small ranch style house
  
• in Germany, in a muddy field behind a small creek, the field rim overgrown with stinging nettles - dry and brown
  
• in Maryland, on a farm with a lone brown-and-white horse enjoying munching the grass in the large paddock surrounded by a wood rail fence
  
• in typical high desert terrain of the lower elevations of eastern Utah, near the Ouray National Wildlife Refuge where lots of waterfowl are taking a rest on their fall migration
  
• in an overgrown area next to a gravel parking area of a country bar in Pennsylvania
  
• in an ordinary house near an industrial park in Portugal
  
• north of St. Louis in an old industrial area with only an odd boarded up building here and there
  
• in an empty, muddy field on the outskirts of a village in Croatia, along a stony track on which an elderly woman was herding long-haired sheep
  
• and 600 meters into Arizona State Trust land, past a twisted saguaro with a corkscrew appearance and near a typical saguaro