Should be FREAKING AWESOME. But it's not.
It's ok, if you get up early and do it all before the tourists get there. Because we totally aren't tourists.... Anyways, crowds ruin the mood... so go early, on a weekday, or something.
The day started off driving through a smoking field, thinking "this is awesome", expecting to find more and more awesomeness as we went. We then went down 61 out of town and found nothing good...
The second thing we did was drive down Big Mine Run Road.... which is also pretty boring. But my coexplorer thought she saw an abanded factory on google maps before we came, so we turned down the only promising road, and found.... something? It was a huge round tank, probably around 5' high but who knows how deep (saved looking till the way out), covered with "explosives warning" signs... anyways, there were all sorts of trails! Including trails towards the windmills, which were a secondary objective. So we took them. In the lowered sportscar. To tell the truth, it was tons of fun, lessened only by my full bladder jouncing, hard, against the seat belt. I didn't even mind the scraping noises the car frame made every now and then. Tons of fun until we came around this one bend towards this amazing looking swooping gravel/dirt road... and this huge crane / dredge / something working away.... we turned around and left post-haste.
So we went back and wandered the smoking trashheap of gravel that is the mine fire. Having seen yellowstone and similar geoactive locations, its rather tame fare, but still kind of cool. Same as the street layout, missing all the houses. Kind of cool, but rather tame compared to some of the things that have been abandoned. Anyways, it was warm, and there were sinkholes, and it smoked, but the smoke just appeared out of a general area, it didn't shoot out or anything.
Then we went off to visit where we thought 61 might be (I avoided doing research to make the trip more interesting)... I contemplated trying to take my car over the hump that has been built... but just couldn't justify that much risk to my front bumper, exhaust system, etc, etc, regardless of how cool the pictures might look. I never expected the walk to be that far... it's all up hill, and rather boring. Slightly more interesting because "The Road" was apparently filmed there in part... and that was an amusing book. Certainly has the feel of a post apocalyptic highway, although the graffiti would have to be about death instead of penises and drugs....
The crack is pretty cool... lightly smoking, but too shallow to be OMFG awesome. That said, it looks like if could be OMFG awesome from a distance... so we took our pictures, and walked to the other end of the road... where we saw that it connected to another trail that my coexplorer begged me not to try to drive down... and she ended up being right-ish. There was a similar insurmountable (via automobile, maybe if I had a huge truck (but that's a plan for another day)) berm.
On the way down a crew of ATV's / Motorbikes came tearing by... As they left one of them almost drove into the crack. I was hoping so hard.... but nope.
The cracking highway explored, all that was left was to visit the windmills... we got a mile out on an access road and gave up, there was a promising road, but who wants to park a bright red "Hey guess where we are" sign next to a locked "No Trespassing, GTFO" sign? Not me, that's who. At least not for that long / for that reason.
We had a picnic in the smoking dump, and by this time it was crowded by tourists, most of whom looked bemused by the car we drove deep into it. Took a few pictures of the car, and left. Oh, and almost side-swiped a huge rock something vicious, but managed to avoid that terrible 5mph accident.
Sinkhole - smoke barely visible.
Creepy looking road.
Me being birthed by the depths of whatever underworld you choose to blame me on. Again with the smoke not showing up well.
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