More January Sight-seeing

I've been doing more wandering. I admit, part of of this is because I worry that in the not-too-distant future there will be no SL, or at least no SL in a form I would recognize.

An early hang-out of mine, the Waterhead Hub. A typical scene:




A view off the dock toward the educational area:



SL has quite a few nature preserves. One I like to visit from time to time is Maplewood.




Here's another cozy location:



When going on a sight-seeing trip, I often like to follow landmarks rather than just wander randomly. The extensive SL roads system is good for this:



But sometimes a random visit can be worthwhile, too:

January Sight-Seeing

For all the years I've been in SL (5 and counting), I have always spent a certain amount of time just wandering from place to place, just to see what people have done. There are some big and spectacular things to see in SL, but I often find I prefer the little touches. For example, one time I ran across a Chinese take-out restaurant, which is a bit whimsical in a virtual world.

In any case, I spent some time the last few days on one of these sight-seeing runs. Here are the records of that.

First, a view of my current home by night.



Touring — I just loved this little shack on the water.







Animated squirrels make mischief:



At the Bear Welcome hub:




Something about the arrangement of the giant tree and the little viewing building appealed to me:

A little nostaliga

I'm not quite sure what damage is going on in my brain, but sometimes I miss the old look of SL. Of course everything looks much nicer now — people, places, the sky. But seeing that crazy old sky brings back memories. It's something about the color:



This was a ridiculous, sci-fi sky home I built, one of my first attempts at building. The photo taken Dec 30 2005, so I was only a few months old in SL years. I had the place floating as a way to avoid seeing my neighbors' terrible builds, as well as the ghastly ad signs that used to infest SL.

Here's another one, not quite so early, June 2006, taken in the Hollywood sim (when there was only the one), when I was sailing a lot:



I look more like this, now:



I was sent down this memory trip by a recent post by Hamlet Au, where he made reference to a 2004 walking tour of SL. There were less than 100 sims, then.

Apropos of nothing: typical of me to actually start blogging about SL when I have serious doubts it'll still exist in a year's time, at least in its current form.