"When Leibniz starts to make sense, you know that tab was good"
Its time for one of my favorite things about UER: the year end recaps. Its always great seeing what everyone's been up to and I look forward to more!
I've had more fun exploring this year than I've had in a long time. I've started focusing less on big institutional campuses and started looking for stuff that's much harder to find. I've discovered a real passion for industrial exploration and, in particular, hydro-turbines. I've spent a lot of time this year crawling into dingy wheel pits, soaked in tail race mud and for the first time in my life, I've had to learn how to pull myself out of quicksand, which is surprisingly common at old mill sites. Hope you enjoy!
1) I started off the year with an old friend. The last time I was in this building, I was sent on my way by a brand new alarm system, but times change and after ten years, its wide open again.
2) Civilian Conservation Corp. Campsite
3) The Two Towers (Its took me two hours to finish eating a banana today)
4) Rumor has it, this cave was the final home to a group of Algonquin-speaking people who were decimated in the King Phillips War.
5) Reform School: Paying a visit after quite a few years.
6) These old textile mills make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, or maybe, its just the lint.
7) Chemical Plant (Its smelled like one too!)
8) Demolition began in May on one of my all time favorite locations. I'd been coming here for 14 years and though I've seen a lot of places come down in that time, seeing it like this still hurt pretty bad.
Due to tight security, I ended up paying a late night visit
9) They started making this place into lofts ten years ago and never finished
10. This nondescript and muddy passage led down into a Hercules Missile launch site. Much of it was filled in with soil, giving it a cave like feel.
11. Choo-choo! This is a good spot to smoke a bowl and not much else.
12. This was another long await return. My last set of shots here? Not so great, but it seemed like, for a while, everyone who set foot on the property got bagged. Then the property changed hands and suddenly its the flavor of the month. I spent a lot of time on the only surviving ward from the Hospital's early days. These pre-1920 lean-too designs are impossibly rare now.
Never mind the mucky high rise
13. County Truant Schools: Aren't too many of these left either.
14. The main part of this antebellum mill burned down years ago leaving a lone tower.
15. My favorite place to climb.
16. She fell down before I could get to her!
17. You gotta swim for it!
18. This was one my buddies SaladKing and C.Enzo showed me. Thanks again!!
19. The Wrong Thread
20. State Hospital Maintenance Shop (I miss the rest of this place)
21. This is where you find the big-boy turbines
22. A little turbine!
23. Mansion
24. More turbines + a car
25. Ancient Mill
26. Bridge to an empty wheel house
27. Fortress Wheel House (I didn't get in)
28. Weave Shed
29. Tricky
30. Research and Development Office
31. More tower = More power
32. Dungeon
33. Yet another, very, very old mill
34. A turbine runner without a case. This is fairly common. It probably wore out and got tossed in the pond.
35. State School
36. Lead Mine
37. Sanatorium 2
38. Steam Train Round House. Not too many of these left.
39. County Morgue and research lab
40. The Original (not the one's you're thinking of) Tuberculosis Tunnels
41. The Tombs
42. Armory
43. My last(?) turbine this year
44. Mill Admin: Its as haunted as it looks, just not by ghosts
45. Steam Engine Skeleton
Can I get a shout out for the 'Monodology'? ...Happy hunting folks
-'Philodiss'