 I don't have a lot of time to work on huge galleries lately, so I decided to tackle some small projects. I took a look at the list of locations I have photos for but won't shoot again (as they've been demolished) and found a couple places where I could finally close the book. One of these locations was Broad Brook Dairy in Preston, CT, which was demolished from August 2008-November 2009. I explored this place with Zack in 2006, and had always wanted to return, but never did. Eventually, I got to see its demise as it was on a mail route I often subbed on. Oh look, an obligatory Saab shot! My 1984 Saab 900 S went with me on a lot of adventures from 2008-2010, and now I have a 1993 Saab 900 S to go on adventures with.  Another place that I had a few photos left to upload was Plainfield High School. This is one place that I would love to actually explore even though I graduated from there in 2002, but it's been left to rot since 2005. I have some pictures I shot with my iPhone through the windows, and uploaded them here. 
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 Often, my adventures overlap. This boat on Napatree Point in the Fort Mansfield gallery was photographed while I was out seaglassing during my first seaglassing adventure in 2008. (I'll be adding seaglassing adventures to this site too, eventually.)
While I was busy adding a little here and a little there and thinking about beaches, it got me to thinking about the last time I was in Watch Hill, which was shortly after Hurricane Sandy. I decided to add a section to the site that doesn't really have to do with urban exploring but is interesting nevertheless - Disasters, Demolitions, Fires, and Floods. Some of those galleries are hosted on Smugmug as they're a part of my professional portfolio. I have a lot of work to do on this site and also to my photos, so I'll post updates in this blog when I'm not actually blogging about recent adventures. Other parts of this site will feature letterboxing, seaglassing/beachcombing, bottle digging, and historical research.  Holy Land USA, August 2006 An old friend was asking me about local abandonments to explore recently which got me thinking about all the places we've explored and lost through the years. Just in the past couple of years we've lost both Ladd School and Norwich State Hospital, among others.
Today was a rainy day, so I didn't go out for any Vanilla Chai Adventures, and decided to stay home and work on this site a little. Some galleries that made their reappearance today: -Fort Mansfield 2003-2006 (I have yet to add any photos I've taken since, though I definitely have some from 2007, 2008, possibly 2009.) -John Avery and John Killiam houses, long gone but still early favorites. -Holy Land USA, but only the pictures I took in 2006 and none from my trip there in 2011. It had changed a lot (and not for the better) with the passage of time. I read today that it's been open to the public again since September, so it would be interesting to take another trip up there to see what's left.  Solitary Silo, Browning Road Griswold, CT - November 29, 2014 On my instagram this week, you may have noticed a bunch of my photos have appeared with the hashtag #vanillachaiadventures.
It is so, so, SO easy to become housebound and stay that way with an infant. I need to get out of the house so I don't go stir crazy. Winter is my least favorite season for a variety of reasons, but it's hard to explore in the winter. With an infant, it's hard to explore when it's cold, so forget it. I'll stay inside where it's warm. I like vanilla chai. It's $2.22. It seems I only get to drink hot tea in the car because if I make tea at home, it's cold for several hours before I can get back to it. Seeing as I live in New England, there's a few Dunkin Donuts within a couple miles of my house, and I don't usually have to drive very far. Some days I only go as far as the Voluntown Post Office, but the important part is that I get out of the house. I also use it as an excuse to hunt for my instagram "photo of the day" that I've been doing since 2012--if you've been reading my other photo blog, you'll know I've been struggling with inspiration there as well. So we come to #vanillachaiadventures. I'll admit, these are mostly shot with the iPhone 5S and burst mode. I want to play around with Hipstamatic's Oggl app and this gives me an excuse to do both!  Some of you know I've run a UE website in some form since my website was on geocities back in 2004. Others knew I shared photos of my adventures on InsaneBunkers until their hardware failure and sitewide crash in 2007, and the last incarnation of my site was "Left Behind - Shadows in the Ruins" which I ran as a sub-section of meganmcgory.com since 2009.
Blah blah website development blah blah, and "Left Behind" was essentially left behind and erased when I moved my site over to weebly from yahoo, so I get to start over again here. It's a lot easier since I'm not doing my own coding, blah blah blah no one cares. I'm not exploring much right now since I just gave birth, but just before I did, Brent and I went to the walking trail at Rocky Point. It was nice being able to walk around there without worrying about getting arrested, and also nice to see there are a few remnants of the park still. I wasn't able to make it to the big Rocky Point open house thing that they had on October 25, but I hope they have something similar next year because that would be awesome. I heard there were a lot of people there. Still, it got me thinking about the explore Zack and I did in July 2003 (11 years ago? Where did the time go?) and I wished my site were still up. The photos aren't good enough to be shared on my photography website (they just aren't) so I decided to bring back the old UE site under a new name "Adventures with Meg", which will be more like a blog of places I've explored in the past and places Brent and I are exploring, whether we're beachcombing or letterboxing or trespassing or just hiking. I'll get to post updates on field research and projects I'm doing for my local historical society too. It's exciting to be able to bring it all together. |
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