Longitude: W 000° 10.602
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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".
- in the gardens behind a block of maisonettes in the UK, reported from an American-themed diner called the OK Diner
- in the middle of Tallarook State Forest, along a ridge following Horans Track with some of the best scenery of rolling hills covered in eucalypts in Victoria, Australia
- in undeveloped land near Scottsdale, Arizona, where the close-to-the-ground cacti were in bloom with lovely shades of yellow, pink and purpose
- in the middle of Maine's Etna pond ("still ice on the pond, but considering the ice was beginning to melt around the edges, I decided not to take the chance")
- in a cattle corral in central Oregon, a kilometer down the road from a llama ranch
- off a gravel road in very rural Arkansas, in a grassy pasture with small pond and a horse
- in England, a short walk from Shepherds Bridge, down a path heavily worn across fields with new lambs, in a wood across another field and two walls
- in a pasture with some hay piles and one horse, down a very small road in a pretty valley in Tennessee ("we were getting the evil eye so we just took a quick look")
- in very rural Missouri, in a grassy unfenced field with a pond in the distance and rolling wooded hills in all directions
- down a dirt lane into scrubby woods in Virginia, mostly pine with minimal undergrowth
- in Estonia, through a nice coastal pine forest, on a bushy meadow in the middle of junipers
- in Victoria, Australia, under a lone tree in long, wet grass -- between a housing estate, an asparagus field, and a field with three alpacas
- along California's Salinas River behind a very secure wire fence in a lettuce field
- in an orange grove in Riverside, California, where most of the fruit is well along to ripening
- in a broad little ravine off a dirt/packed sand road in a mature forest in Florida's panhandle
- in National Wildlife Reserve land in Virginia a half mile from a Northern Neck winery
- in the Harcourt Valley Vineyard in Victoria, Australia, amongst the vines that were just starting to turn with their autumn colours
- in a small park on California's coastal Hwy 1, unreachable this day because of the running of the Big Sur International Marathon
- in front of a green ranch-style house in Kansas City with a vintage blue Corvette in the driveway
- near Clipstone, UK, a nice easy driveby on the entrance road to the Sherwood Forest Holiday Park, just off Goosethorpe Lane
- in Veterans Woods in suburban Chicago, unreachable to a recent flooding and a swollen creek, but the hiking was great
- and in Ullin, Illinois, in an old cemetery with many old graves and unreadable stones
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