Saturday, May 7, 2016

OTBR: Blue House near Wheaton College

Latitude N 41° 52.116
Longitude: W 088° 06.144

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".


  • on the front porch of a light blue house with a wide raised porch just a long frisbee throw from the entrance to the main historic building of Illinois's Wheaton College
  • in Seal Beach, California, in a one-story, gray house with palm trees and gingkos in front and lots of crushed white rock as border
  • in Duncannon, Pennsylvania, in a one-story, brick house with a white frame addition and a glider on the front porch
  • south of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in the woods behind a row of large homes on large lots along a ridge line
  • in Virginia, behind Valley Bible Church, reached via Zion Church Road to Refuge Church Road to Double Church Road
  • west of Melbourne, in a new housing estate with a few houses under construction, near a small lake with a walking track
  • on the Hamilton Highway in Victoria, Australia, in a for-sale, modern low brick house with a man hand-watering young trees lining the driveway, trying to keep them alive in the very, very dry area
  • on a farm in New South Wales, scorable from the road, saving a walk through a "forest" of "Farmer's Friends" (or "Sticky Beaks" as some call them)
  • on a farm field in Illinois covered with a blanket of purple clover bordered by yellow dandelions growing in the right-of-way along the road
  • in a large, lush field of grass in Vacaville, California, near a new neighborhood under construction
  • in Minnesota, in the woods along Old Military Road, the historic road along the St. Croix River linking the Mississippi River at Point Douglas to Lake Superior
  • down a dirt trail suitable only for motor bikes, in the Lake Macquarie State Recreation Area in New South Wales
  • in Iowa farm country, in a field of very dark dirt, recently tilled and maybe planted, about a half mile from the nearest farm house
  • in Minnesota's Rum River State Forest where some of the trees had a hint of green as the new leaf buds were just starting to open
  • near a small, old-looking log cabin on the campus of Virginia's Randolph College, alma mater of Pearl Buck ("The Good Earth")
  • in Westboro, Missouri, in a fenced pasture area just past a small creek
  • in Illinois, along a rural road between two bridges over small creeks, in an untilled field with some golden rod growing in
  • in a field in Illinois with corn plants about 2 inches tall ("In about 5 months, the corn plants will be 8 to 10 feet tall and the tops will wave in the wind")
  • in the backyard of a house in nice development in Nebraska ("Scored just as a storm was beginning. Saw an awesome double rainbow up the road")
  • 200 meters off a dirt/gravel road in New South Wales, in thick, thorny vines and 100 meters beyond a wall of impenetrable growth
  • and in Victoria, Australia, out of reach behind a fence with warning signs on its gate plus two Australian flags and about 100 empty beer cans (Victoria Bitter) strung like a necklace on the top strand of barbed wire above the gate

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