I recently told my mom about my love for abandoned buildings and how much I love just hanging out inside taking photos. She now wants to plan a trip with me to go exploring. I've only ever explored a few places so I'm pretty rookie, I feel like it wouldn't be a great look to get caught trespassing with your mother. Anybody have any stories exploring with their parents?
Obviously explore something low-risk, at least to start, but this doesn't seem too weird to me. If anything, the fact an adult would want to explore with someone underage is the oddest thing in your post.
I think it's nice your mom wants to explore with you and legally it will be better for you if you get caught since security or police are most likely to let you go.
My dad came twice with me but i was in my early 30's
Yeah, gotta agree with this. I've brought both my kids to some wonderful explorz, they love it and its such fun to watch the excitement and amazement of a new explorer. Low/no risk locations obviously, but it's also a perfect time to give them a good solid foundation in ethical exploring and serious safety habits. Sharing what you're into with parents can be a good thing and they might even learn a thing or two
I started exploring in earnest when I was probably 12 or 13. When I tell people about that, they invariably ask what my mother thought about my hobby. I ask them who they think drove me in the first place. The best way to get your parents involved is to just ask them to go with you. Parents like doing things with their children. A good starting point for you might be to research nearby Nike missile bases. It's pretty easy to find their locations and about 1 in 10 is preserved and accessible.
I'd love to take my dad out to an old army facility near me. He's not terribly thrilled about the whole trespassing thing but he's a WWII buff so we'll see lol.
my mom has always been my exploring partner, however she chickens out a lot and would end up looking at the outsides of the buildings. she also never called it exploring or urbex but rather would say, "are we going to do that creepy weird shit this weekend?"
One time I took my mom to explore a double storm drain by entering into an outfall with duo 6 foot RCP tunnels with water rushing out of them. We had to be careful walking into the tunnels because it was "SLIPPERY" outside of the tunnel where the rushing water was coming out of. As I walked up the tunnel, apparently my mom couldn't keep up with me because I am a fast walker and she didn't have a light, so I had to stop and wait for her (LOL). when we were switching to the next tunnel she slipped and fell in the fast moving water at the outfall, her sunglasses fell off her head and got washed down towards the Mississippi River and I ran and got them for her. Surprisingly enough I didn't slip and fall on the way there but when the glasses got down to the Mississippi River, they were floating around in a circle without sinking right at the bottom of the slope of the drains, so I was able to grab them easily. My mom did hit her head when she fell but she seemed to be fine but I still felt bad because she fell. With that being said, whoever goes into storm drains, be very careful when walking in drains because you never know if it will be slippery or not. Usually for me, concrete tunnels are usually not too slippery but brick tunnels for me are almost always slippery if you are not careful when walking in them and these tunnels are concrete but the actual tunnels we were in weren't slippery at all but the area outside of the drains were and I warned her to "BE CAREFUL WHEN WALKING INTO THE DRAINS BECAUSE THEY MIGHT BE SLIPPERY". I don't know if she enjoyed exploring the drains with me or not because she complained a lot, so it's hard to tell. Being as my mom used to be an urban explorer back in her day, I figured it would be fun to take her on my adventures and as it turned out to be rather amusing and it was even funnier to see that she is scared of spiders (LOL). I think if your parents are interested in what you are doing, I say bring them along because you never know it they will like it or not. I have a young niece who seems to be interested in my storm drain exploring and I would like to bring her some time.
For as non-adventurous as my parents usually are, they have been surprisingly tolerant of the whole exploration thing. As long as there are no legal repercussions, of course. Here's my dad exploring an old church with me back in 2011.
Oh good, my slow clap processor made it into this thing.
In the 1960's my father and I checked out an abandoned spur off the rail line that ran between Chestnut Hill & Philadelphia. It went until we came to Lavrock and that was it. Also a house near Fairmount Park...
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