Saturday, May 7, 2011

OTBR: At the End of Runway 33L

Latitude: 39.1631 N
Longitude: 76.6619 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".


  • about 100 yards south of the end of runway 33L just outside the fence of BWI (Baltimore/Washington International) airport
  • just outside Queensland's Sunshine Coast Airport (commonly known as the Maroochydore Airport)
  • in Nebraska, at the edge of a minimum maintenance road ("just as we got to the DP I saw a plane landing to the west on a private airstrip at a farm")
  • in Oregon, in mixed juniper, ponderosa pine and sagebrush on flat terrain ("No elk seen but there was much evidence of deer and we saw a large coyote.")
  • in the Arizona desert, very close to Meteor Crater
  • in Maryland, in a small brick shed at the back of the lot near a wooded area ("I don't recall ever seeing such a well built tool shed.")
  • in California, in the parking lot of the Shilo Inn Hilltop Restaurant & Lounge ("There is a good view over the freeways and green hills.")
  • in a California gated community of two-story homes on postage-stamp lots, with palm trees poking up here and there
  • "by an odd, and oddly appealing, sort of half-a-house design in the tiny Mojave Desert community of Rimrock ... an area where eccentricity is the norm."
  • in a pine plantation in Queensland with tall grass -- snake habitat, large grasshoppers and large spider webs
  • in a "Missouri Conservation Area" down a deer track with soggy ground and then bushwhacking through waist-high brush
  • in a hemmed-in pasture in Utah, with a steer staring back from under a large gnarled tree
  • in the Hague, Netherlands, in a very narrow street near the front doors of a duplex home ("beautiful tulips, hyacinths, windmills, churches and government buildings. Wow!")
  • in the Texas scrub, with a wheel & fence-iron sculpture to boot ("Yup, gotter done!")
  • above Washington's Puget Sound in front of a greenish house with black shutters ("although high up from the shore, there are too many houses in front to have a good view from here.")
  • in Iowa, in an old soybean field ("probably will be planted next month") near the end of a tractor path that provided the only place to park
  • in a forest in Finland ("There was still in many places snow on the ground, but it was already quite easy to walk. Skiing is not any more possible.")
  • and behind an open shed on Victoria's Mornington Peninsula, with a large vine in front ("autumn weather ensured that the vine was a blaze of red leaves")

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