OTBR: On the Island Muhu in Estonia

Latitude 58.5993° N
Longitude 23.0737° E

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 a meadow on the island Muhu in Estonia, behind the Koguva old-style farm house village-museum
  
• in the driveway of a house with a wrought iron fence in Pasadena, California, just a few blocks from where New Year's crowds were gathering for the annual Rose Parade
  
• outside a neat, single-level brick veneer house in Kilsyth, Victoria, whose grey-striped window awnings were firmly pulled down to guard against the predicted 36 degree heat
  
• 98m beyond the fence in the vast western district plains of Victoria, Australia ("Very fry out here this time of the year.")
  
• in a harvested corn field in Minnesota ("Sunny and above freezing, well above normal for this time of year. Yesterday's light snowfall was rapidly melting.")
  
• in a harvested corn field in Iowa ("Much variation in shades of gold and brown on this trip, but I still prefer the green of warmer times.")
  
• in Colorado's Pike National Forest, through a cow pasture, over a small hill, across a small creek and a foot of snow, into forest land without the trees
  
• in heavy forest down a one-lane gravel road in Illinois
  
• just off the edge of a mesa overlooking the greater Vernal, Utah, area, a spot offering beautiful vistas
  
• near the edge of a massive lava flow west of Cascades Lakes Highway near Wickiup Reservoir in Oregon's Deschutes National Forest
  
• and along Minnesota's highway 23, the scenic route to Duluth, just a short walk through the ditch and a narrow band of woods to the top of the cut slope for the railroad