OTBR: Ankeny National Wildlife Refuge

Latitude: 44.8450° N
Longitude: 123.0476° 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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• on a Christmas tree farm in Oregon, a few kilometers from the Ankeny National Wildlife Refuge, winter home of Dusky Canada Geese
  
• in a forest in Estonia surrounded by brush that was dense like a jungle and soaking wet from a cold rain
  
• in a forest in Finland, near an old barn and a small lake
  
• in flat lodgepole forest near a major north-south gas pipeline that runs through central Oregon
  
• in a tilled corn field in Minnesota
  
• in a lagoon on the southern California coast called Agua Hedionda (Stinking Water) near a small landing at the base of a steep bluff, home of the Carlsbad Stand-Up Paddleboard Club
  
• and in a dam on a cattle and sheep property northwest of Melbourne ("The dams were all full and there is plenty of grass and feed for livestock")