There were three of us on this expedition. I’m a little surprised all three made it back unscaffed. 4:04 pm, arrival at final house pick up in the hillbilly caravan. The truck was beautiful cover up. With the tinted black windows, we looked like a crew of regular ol’ rural mass country Mitt Romney preaching Americans. 4x4, with hay residue in the back and just enough dust on the tires to blend in at a place like this, even before our arrival.
First gate looked like trouble, big bad signs with pictures of cameras and bold letters of red was our key not to pull in. Turned around, kept following the road. Red truck followed us for at least two miles. No one caught where he came from. Eventually turned off, puttered down some major road unknown to us, assumed a coincidence. To the best of my current knowledge it was.
Slightly more obscured path. Traveled down to the ‘abandoned’ quarry. There were know traces of civil current life forms mucking about, nor any construction workers excavating limestones chunks or sleazy old timers with glasses looting for copper scraps. All initially seemed in the clear, but something bothered in the distance. A lone sprinkler was on, completely out of place a top of pile of lime stone that didn’t look like it needed watering. The water was falling onto the dirt, and only onto the dirt. I still don’t know what it was there.
Suspicious but too giddy with the prospects of a good adventure to turn back, we drove onwards. Half a mile down, unseen to our knowledge, with know obvious camera or security sight age in our skeptical peripherals. The spotting of the quarry itself came as a surprise. Past an old barn, around a skinny run of rail road tracks there’s a clearing in the woods that reveals the massive limestone refinery beyond. This was the promised city of rock we had come for.
Passenger 1 insisted on parking by two other cars off to the side. I was suspicious. This place was far from utter abandonment, even if excavation itself had ceased. I insisted on parking away from the barn, right by the clearing so we could make a clean get away. The two cars parked at the other location looked like they’d been used recently. The one to our right could have been there for months for all I know, but the one to the left was undoubtedly in use. 2013 inspection sticker, 2012 membership stickers, a football club sticker and a police force one. It was ambiguous as to what the purpose of the police man sticker was, it could have ben part of some weird rural county police fan club. But if it was present, I wasn’t willing to take that risk. I suppose it didn’t matter either way.
I lost the vote on parking. Crazy cop wins.
Quarry was beautiful, Ill skip the verbal on this. Don’t think anything I could describe could top what astounding photos are already up here.
We stayed around for 45 minutes. No signs of anyone. There was the faint ringing of a truck backing up at one point, but it could have been coming from the street beyond the highway.
When we came back, the football police’s car was gone. We scrammed out of there with no issue. That is, until we got to the front gate.
All entrances were completely blocked off. Master lock, iron fence, rings of chains. We checked out three different gates. To my knowledge, these are the only drivable ones.
As we pulled out, a man with a floral t-shirt who looked like a Hunter S. Thompson/ American Psycho mish mash eyed our car, or white, all america non de script working class pick up truck, and watched us roll pass. We discreetly obscured our faces and when we were far away I turned back to look at him. He didn’t seem to be paying attention.
Puttered around for a while. We parked the car in a fairly desolate location. I kept watch to make sure no one snooped us out while the other two split up and searched for another exit. No luck. We drove back to the main gate, pen and paperclip in hand ready to pick the lock and high tail out of there.
But as we pulled around back to the gate, someone had taken apart the chain and lock, leaving a clear path to the highway. Incredible luck. Or so we hope.
Something feels very, very fishy about the scenario. When we passed to go back to the gate, the man who lives in the giant mansion with the floral shirt was mowing his lawn. He didn’t look up as we pulled past. So far, no word has come from the scenario. I’m hoping he mistook us for a worker that who was passing through, and unlocked the door to let us out. But I’m concerned that there’s someone living on the premise. For all future explorers out there, use extreme caution, and try and go in a winter month. Construction should be down. The main quarry is out of use, but there’s a nearby operation at the top of a hill adjacent of it that you should be weary of. Park off perimeter, scope out all corners before proceeding into anywhere. There’s loads of breath taking sights to be found here, but the risk is great. We almost got locked in. You might have better luck with a morning venture, or going in the dead of night and finding somewhere discreet to park nearby, but none of these are fool proof. If not for that sweet, sweet pick up truck, I’m near certain today would not have been a good day. 4x4 wheel drive is a must too, if you want to try and venture on to the work site.


This was written early july 2012. Initially, I wanted to wait out a little bit, just in case. But I forgot I wrote it, hence the extremely late post. Nothing regarding the incident has come back up since then. I can’t confirm if the information regarding the quarry is still true. It may be abandoned in winter months. My guess is it’s not going to be totally abandoned for quite some time though.