OTBR: Werribee Open Range Zoo

Latitude: S 37° 55.938
Longitude: E 144° 39.468

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".

---

• inside the Werribee Open Range Zoo southwest of Melbourne, reachable by hiking and biking trails along the river outside
• in Lithuania, 437 meters off the road in woods, driven past but not reachable in heavy rain, in the dark, close to midnight :-(
• on a road (or strip of conjugated potholes) in the Uruguayan frontier town of Chui ("The only reason this place exists is for Brazilians to cross the border and buy duty free products.")
• at a junction outside Cologne, Germany, where a tourist sign helpfully indicates "500m to the Landhaus Spatzenhof"
• in Evansville, Indiana, in the parking lot of a Holiday Inn Express which was next to a LaQuinta Inn and right next to the cloverleaf exit from Interstate 69
• next door to a couple of motels (here motels are for "illicit" sex) in the once amazingly chic Uruguayan city of Punta del Este (back in the 1950s and '60s)
• in Leipzig, Germany, inside a Second-Hand-Shop for gastronomy accessories
• in the yard behind a house in Rio Rico, Arizona, only about 10 km from the Mexican border ("Recent Monsoon rains had really greened up the surrounding desert landscape")
• in a cornfield in Nebraska ("All the fields are amazingly lush and green, the weather lovely with mashed potato clouds dotting the sky.")
• in the Florida panhandle, about 320 meters down a rough, red dirt track, past a small lake and on rough ground with scrubby brush
• in a large field of grass near a grove of trees in Missouri, with Queen Anne's Lace growing along both sides of the road
• in an uncultivated field in Nebraska across the road from a pig farm with a sign regarding respecting their "biosecurity"
• in a cul-de-sac in Melbourne's outer northern suburb of Craigieburn, filled with new streets dotted with modern homes, many still being built
• on a lovely street in San Anselmo, California, where most of the homes are hidden behind trees, hedges and other greenery giving the area almost a Hobbiton feel
• and near a log house with several private ponds in northern Ohio, in a hilly and wooded area with lots of gritty towns and run-down houses