Second Life is made up of hundreds of beautiful and interesting sims and a lot of SL citizens enjoy taking the time to explore some of them. But where can someone go in this virtual world to find places to explore? Perhaps you should try visiting Expedition Central.
"Expedition Central has a long history in Second Life. With a huge collection of landmarks, it’s a place for both those new to SL as well as the experienced wanderers. Actually, there are two EC locations," said Severn Laryukov, the current caretaker of what is an epic undertaking.
EC is something of a clearing house for cool and interesting landmarks. They are posted on the walls of the group’s two clubhouse buildings. The larger, main location is in Chilbo with a smaller, more curated clubhouse at Helping Haven Gateway.
The project was the passion of Cyrus Hush. He started collecting LMs in the early 2000s. He first simply shared locations he found interesting with friends on note cards. Deciding to share further, he created the Expedition Central group in order to better distribute his LMs and to allow for discussion with members.
From there he created what he called the clubhouse and began posting the LMs, along with a brief description, for people to take and explore.
In RL Cyrus was an educator and had even been given the highest award by Virtual Education Journal which dedicated an entire issue to him.
Sadly, Cyrus passed away in 2016 and his longtime friend, Josain Zsun, took over the reins of EC. Like Cyrus, Josain was a RL educator and avid SL explorer.
Josain had met Cyrus in 2009. Cyrus was giving tours of SL to educators as part of the International Society for Technology in Education. The two bonded over mutual interests and Josain became very active in EC.
The passing of Cyrus created a major problem for EC. His account became inaccessible and so the clubhouses and their wealth of LMs were lost.
Josain took on the task of rebuilding and re-stocking the clubhouses. By the time he had them both back up and working, Josain estimated that there were about 1000 LMs available for avid explorers.
Last year Josain realized that he needed to step away as maintaining EC had become too much work. Finding someone to take over, though, didn't take very long.
"I met Josain while wandering back in 2022," said Severn. "I became sort of a 'field reporter', finding new locations and sharing them with Josain so he could add them to EC. I do love exploring and this was a great way to share my passion with other people. Josain decided to retire from managing EC at the end of 2024 and was looking for someone to take over as curator. I had more than two years invested in building it up so I decided to volunteer."
With the two clubhouse locations in place, the main challenge for Severn is to keep things running smoothly by adding new LMs of interest and weeding out those that have become "dead links." Don't think that isn't a lot of work.
"There are a little over a thousand landmarks at the main Chilbo location, and about half that many at the Helping Haven location. Plenty to keep you busy exploring," said Severn.
While Severn will find new locations to add to the clubhouses herself, she also relies on others, especially members of the EC group, to send her suggestions.
"I absolutely love it when people send me LMs to new locations they found, or even old ones I didn't know about. They can drop me the LM in an IM, or I have mailboxes setup at each location where they can send me LMs or questions. I post almost any location that looks interesting. I don't tend to post purely commercial or main store locations, however there are plenty of store locations that have a nice ambiance, or a garden, or a city, that are worth exploring. They definitely get added," she pointed out.
"As you know, sims disappear from SL. Some stay around for a long time, and others disappear suddenly. Checking and cleaning up 'dead links' is quite time consuming, so I tend to tackle one wall at a time. I have to visit each location to see if it's still there. If it’s not there I also do some searching, because sometimes a destination just moves, and is not actually gone. For the ones that are really gone I remove them from EC and replace them with a blank plaque. The upside is that sometimes when I'm looking for a missing destination, I actually discover a new one, and of course add it to EC," said Severn.
While the vast number of LMs in the clubhouses make sorting them into categories quite difficult, people can always find seasonal locations on the walls by the entrances. These will change with the seasons but make it easy for people to find among the mass of options.
Severn said that she has her favorite types of sims, particularly those with interesting nature or urban builds. But being a fan of all types of exploring she encourages everyone to get out and find what interests them.
"Enjoy your rambling, and please do share locations that you love," she added.
Additional Information:
SLURL: http://maps.secondlife.
http://maps.secondlife.com/
Group: a6e1543f-b3ba-bc1e-
Preferred Contact: Severn Laryukov
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