Thursday, June 6, 2013

OTBR: A Field of Snapdragons in California

Latitude: N 34° 39.288
Longitude: W 120° 26.160

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 River Park in Lompoc, California (camping, picnics and a duck pond stocked with fish), near a field of snapdragons being cut for sale to florists
  • at a house in a 1950s subdivision in Bailey's Harbor, Virginia ("There were flowers in the bed to the left of the front door, but they were all shriveled and dead - I think they were daffodils, but I'm not very good at dead flower recognition. Across the driveway, there was an azalea in full bloom - at least I think it was an azalea - I'm not very good at live flower recognition either.")
  • off Ferntree Gully Road in Melbourne, by an unremarkable single-level brick house with a low fence and a medium sized fruit tree covered in gauze netting to protect it from birds
  • in the UK, inside a brick house on St Augustines Avenue near the town centre of Chesterfield
  • in Utah, in sagebrush and juniper trees just northeast of US Highway 50 ("The Loneliest Road in America")
  • on the grounds of Rosebank College in Croydon, Sydney, New South Wales ("by holding the camera up over the brick fence, it appears to be the car park")
  • in a stand of pines 100 km north of Minneapolis ("I drove through rain, sleet, snow, and dust storms. Farmers were tilling and planting seeds.")
  • west of Melbourne, in a very large paddock containing about 200 grazing sheep
  • unreachable in a quarry area of Penrith Lakes, near the Sydney International Regatta Center, used in the 2000 Olympics
  • on the grounds of a fish hatchery between the towns of Loa and Fremont in south central Utah
  • at an intersection of two gravel roads in Nebraska ("the freshly planted corn is just a few inches high")
  • on the shore of Riley Lake in Minnesota
  • in a former plant nursery in Queensland, now a re-vegetation area planted with native trees
  • and at the back boundary of a cemetery in Vermont, where a young Geodashing player and his friends would dare each other to enter ... at night of course, especially around Halloween

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