OTBR: A Split-Log Boardwalk in Finland

Latitude: N 61° 53.826
Longitude: E 023° 12.408

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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• near a lake in Finland, with a wooden walkway across very soft and fragile ground to a small, decrepit dock that offered a stunning view across the lake
• in dense woods off of a rails-to-trails hiking trail in Nebraska
• in an open field of tall grass and weeds in Missouri, down eight miles of dirt and gravel roads
• at a brick house painted white next to a weatherboard house with a Vote Greens placard in the Melbourne suburb of Brunswick
• southwest of Houston, about two kilometers from the KUHF-FM radio tower that's 524 meters tall
• in a pasture near a pond in Missouri, in rural land with narrow and heavily worn roads, quite hilly and wooded
• in Minnesota, in a pasture fenced with white electric fencing, with four or five horses were standing in a circular corral
• in a cornfield in Iowa behind a house with a John Deere tractor for sale in the yard
• near a scummy pond in a pasture in Missouri, down a hill from a farm house with a decorative old buggy frame in the yard
• on the back porch of a fine Queen Anne home in Heritage Square in Oxnard, California, an area of old homes of Victorian, Edwardian, American Craftsman and other styles
• in a huge double-storey house with two garages (3+1) on a steep block backing onto Lysterfield National Park with front views across hills to the city of Melbourne
• in the oil fields of northeastern Utah ("We saw some pronghorn including a few fawns with their moms")
• in the parking lot of a medical clinic in Des Moines, Iowa
• behind a building in Ottawa that houses a global company dealing in secondhand goods
• on the grounds of Laguna District School, a one-room schoolhouse built in 1906 in the rolling hills west of Petaluma, California
• on the campus of the University of Missouri on a large field used for club sports such as soccer, lacrosse, rugby
• in Illinois, at a church surrounded by cornfields, just inside a small fence that serves as the outfield fence of small ball field ("If you build it, he will come.")
• and in the forest in Estonia with huge swarms of horseflies and wild strawberries on the roadside