My great road trip through the world of Second Life begins in Noyo.

Noyo is amongst the earliest sims to come online back in February

2004 and it is here, in the shadow of the swaying trees of mighty

Kahruvel, that the great road east is born. Here you can rez a car and

prepare to start your journey.

Except don’t. Not yet. Look to the southern edge of the little patch

of tarmac and you’ll see a sign for a ghost train ride below you. This

is Sinatra Cartier’s Spook House and you should take five minutes out

of your busy schedule to take a seat and pay 10L$ for a ride – it’s

good, honest scary fun! The ride was built way back in 2004 by Sinatra

Cartier to celebrate his childhood trips to funfairs and has been a

permanent fixture of the region ever since.

Sinatra himself is one of the early adopters who still call these

old regions of the mainland home – in fact it’s rare when land this old

comes up for sale and this means a strange and comforting feeling of

continuity can be found here, a sense of the stable in a world that is

constantly making and remaking itself around you.

Across the water in front of the spook house ride, the land rises up

towards Albion where the beautiful Japanese gardens can be found. To

the west rests the beautiful village of Cowell and beyond that,

Abbott’s Aerodrome soars high above the sea below. The waterways here

are perfect for navigating a small boat or kayak around the coast or

pressing deep into the river network, but that is for another travel

guide. Now it is high time for this Backpacking Burro to get back to

the open road and start both his car and his journey. Next stop,

Davenport and Bodega.

Yours in Travel,

Headburro Antfarm.

http://headburroantfarm.wordpress.com/

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A wee word about roads in SL. Although they are largely empty these

days they were at one time the best way to get around as instantaneous

point-to-point teleportation as we have now simply did not exist. At

first the world was small enough to walk or fly around. Then, as it

grew, teleportation hubs were placed at key locations and you had to

pay to beam between them before continuing your journey on foot or by

vehicle. It was at this time that the road network we see now was

introduced and people used to cherish roadside properties as it allowed

them easy access to the main transportation network they needed to get

to places and see their friends. But eventually free P-2-P

teleportation came and the roads (and rail and plane and water) network

died overnight and are now the preserve of the dedicated explorer alone.