Longitude: 2.2494 E
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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 last month that are "off the blue roads".
"We have been spending a week in Paris to celebrate the 2011 New Year and decided that a Parisien dashpoint on the first day of the new year would be a good start to the year. We were up late watching the fireworks (such as they were) on the Eiffel Tower, which we could just see through the mist from our apartment, so we left on foot at about 1.00pm. We walked along Rue de Sevres and quickly reached the Metro station called Sevres-Babylone. We travelled to Gare Saint-Lazare where our Transilien suburban train awaited us. Our train reached Gare Argenteuil at about 1.30pm and we walked through the streets of this outer suburb following the GPSr pointer. The houses were distinctively French in their architecture, with many small two-storey dwellings having attic accommodation. It was also noticeable that here in this suburb there were numerous fast-food establishments, with MacDonalds and its French equivalent, 'Quick', side by side along with Kebab shops, 'Indien Pakistani' food, Asian, Greek food and Italian Pizzas as well as baguettes, croissants, etc."
--Dashing Dog Mac
"This was the most extreme dashpoint I've ever visited. It was in a real ass of the hell, or actually on a small peninsula called "Võilaid" or "Butter islet" in translation. It used to be a real islet in the past, but because the land is continuously rising here, it now has a narrow (and awfully bad and swampy) connection to island Muhu. Walking there was really like in butter, only deep snow instead of it, occasionally with some water and unfrozen mud under it. It took me 9 hours total to get there and back. First my car got stuck around there 4 times. Finally I reached to 2,7km from target and took a 5 hour walk in 50cm deep snow. Next time when I go to such place in winter, I buy myself snowshoes. Then I can walk on the snow, not step through it. And I'll tie my pants to my ankles. Then snow can't push them up and get in my boots. I poured half glass of water out of my left boot at home. And I was wandering, why my toes were freezing. Still 5 hours in snow like that..."
-- Haraldpoiss
A sampling of other random waypoints:
- just off a snowy road in Estonia, a few steps into a clearing in the woods with some young spruces
- in the middle of some apple trees in Finland, near an old wooden bridge over the river Aura
- on a snowy hillside in Minnesota
- on a large, wooded, residential lot off a cul-de-sac in Wisconsin, visited in thickening snow storm
- in Georgia, inside a house with snow on the roof and in the yard
- in a travellers park in the UK off the M1 at junction 21
- in the busy interchange of I-55 and Rt. 141 south of St. Louis
- on the playground at Arizona's New River Elementary School
- an empty field of tall grass that was beaten down by the snow cover at Missouri's Troy Buchanan Senior High School
- in a harvested hay field in Ohio
- in Minnesota, in a flat field with some corn stalks sticking out of the snow at various angles
- in Utah, behind a farm house with several old, non-functioning cars and pickup trucks in the yard
- and near the welcome sign to Idanha, Oregon, "just a wide spot on the highway with no services or attractions"
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