urbex || the rural mansion

Sometimes adventures don't always go as planned.

My bestie Niesho and I checked out an abandoned mansion the other day. It's a beautiful building from the outside. It sits right on the highway which made getting a nice picture from the front a no-go, so here's the back. As you can see, the entire building was completely surrounded by pretty thick vegetation, ranging from knee- to waist-high. There were some cute little critters hiding in all that mess, including tons of baby grasshoppers! I love my camera. Every time I use it is a learning experience. I almost got the little guy in focus, but not quite, hahah.

I'm honestly not sure what kind of bug this is! It had some neat markings on its back, wish I'd managed to get a good shot of them!

It was a hot day out, so Niesho and I had worn shorts.... baaaaad idea. My legs were bright red by the time we reached the house- scratches from burrs and other such prickly things, which my stupidly-delicate skin waaaay overreacts to. Eventually, the marks faded enough that I could see all the mosquito bites I'd received, hahah. I read an article once that claimed that some people are yummier to mosquitos than others, just based on their body chemistry, and I am inclined to believe it! When Josh and I did yardwork in our previous residence, I would get at least a dozen bites and the little buggers would completely ignore him! Lucky jerk. I love ivy. We lived in a house when I was 3-8 that was cooooooovered in ivy. It was so gorgeous. I've driven past that house a time or two in recent years, and, sadly, the ivy has since been completely removed. It honestly added a lot to the beauty of that house, because it went particularly well with the house's design, style, architecture, whatever the right word is. I hear that ivy can actually cause a fair amount of damage, though, so I guess I can't blame whoever pulled it down.

All the entrances on the back are boarded up, so Niesho and I worried that we'd braved Grass Hell for nothing, but some kind soul had propped open a side door for easy access. The inside of the building is pretty barren. The story goes that the owners went through a messy divorce in the 80's, before construction was finished, and couldn't agree on who would keep the mansion, so they just kind of let it... sit there. Niesho being a goofball. I wanted to get a photo of both of us in the fireplace, but I couldn't figure out how to enable the timer function... which is weird, because I've used the timer function before! I felt particularly stupid but I honestly searched through all the menu options three or four times. I think I need to play around with my camera more at home, where the instruction manual is, hahah.

The most (and possibly only?) interesting feature was the spiral staircase. The second floor was just as featureless as the first. Creepy doorway hidden in a corner. No, we did not go in, because we're babies. There was very little graffiti, probably because there were so few complete walls. Third verse, same as the first... There were a number of names carved into a particular support pole (column? strut?). I neglected to take a photo of this for some reason (???) but I did snap a pic of our addition (in my horrible key-wielding handwriting, haha). ("Ell & Niesho were here 5/31/14")

Overall, it was a bit of a bust. We'd brought lunch (DQ!), but we didn't even want to eat there. The little dark piles you see in a lot of photos are exactly what you think they are- piles of poop. I'm not an expert, but I doubt wildlife does much stair-climbing, so the fact that the 2nd and 3rd floors had more little "presents" than the 1st floor kinda says to me that this place has seen some nasty-ass squatters.

Niesho thought it only appropriate to quote Titanic while walking down that admittedly cool staircase. And that was it! Much less enjoyable than our previous explorations, unfortunately, but hey, had to cross this one off the list at some point, right? We managed to salvage our outing with a trip to the theatre to see Maleficent, though, which we thoroughly enjoyed, and then Niesho let me paint her nails (Harley Quinn-themed), so it wasn't a complete waste of a day.

Hope you're having more successful adventures than this one!
❤︎

urbex || the meat-packing plant

The photographer Niesho and I met at the abandoned incinerator suggested we check out a meat-packing plant nearby. It was even cooler than the incinerator! We "packed" a lunch (from Whataburger) and off we went!

The ceiling was caving in in a lot of areas. Just like in the incinerator, there was tons of graffiti, ranging from beautiful and thought-provoking to crude and vulgar. Yes, that's definitely Arthur Read in gold. Dicks. Dicks everywhere. Niesho and I agreed this was probably meant to convey a dick going into a butt. "Just Another Dumb Name You Won't Remember..." "Lowlah! Help me! Im going Nuts"
This building has been abandoned for over fifty years, so nature had had plenty of time to creep back in. Turns out the cave-ins were likely due to all the trees growing on the roof! That's Fort Worth in the background, I believe. A guard tower at a meat packing plant?
There were several other buildings, but we decided they could wait. I'm sure we'll be visiting this place again sometime, it was too gorgeous not to! When I saw this star on the ground in front of an elevator, it seemed familiar. Maybe I'm imagining the similarity, but to me, it looked a lot like the plaque outside the Fort Worth Stockyards! There was a hole in an exterior wall near an elevator that really caught my eye. I love the way someone took the time to paint individual bricks different colours. This feels like a secret passageway to Wonderland or Narnia or something ❤︎ All in all, it was a pretty exciting adventure! We ran across a guy and a gal that were staging an amateur photoshoot- smart idea, the building definitely makes for an interesting backdrop!

Niesho and I got a chance to catch up, too, which is nice. We've been best friends since I spotted her in her goth garb across the gym in grade 9 (I desperately wanted to be a goth in high school so I was instantly enamored of her hahah), but we don't see each other as much these days. That crazy person is somehow balancing two jobs, school, and a six-year-old, which (obviously) doesn't leave a huge amount of free time, plus we live 45min apart (90min when the traffic's bad, which it often is). We found a nice spot by an exterior door on the second or third floor and just sat and ate and talked. I took hundreds of pics, and while I managed to pare that down to 79, that's still way too many for one post! So, you can see the rest of the photos in my Flickr album.

I'll end with my favourite photo. Happy adventuring!
❤︎

urbex || the incinerator

I'm always late to the party, mainly because I don't know the party exists at first! I had never heard of urban exploration until recently, but it tickled a fancy I had apparently been harbouring all along. Niesho was just as interested, and together we decided to check out an abandoned incinerator!

The incinerator. There was a lot of graffiti, obviously. Some of it was thought-provoking: And some of it, not so much: Some of the art was simple: And some of it was more complex, or colourful, or just well-blended: Sadly, a lot of the nicer pieces had been painted over: You jelly of someone's artistic abilities, cuz? My photography, as evidenced by these photos, leaves a lot to be desired (that's okay, I'm still learning!). You can barely see the giant owl on the far wall here: It must have been quite lovely before someone scribbled all over its face. I stuck my head in the oven on the left on a whim, and found this inside: Perhaps a farewell to Selena? That was only nineteen years ago, after all, and this building has obviously been abandoned at least that long.

Interestingly enough, we weren't the only people there! There was a (small) professional photo shoot going on, as we suspected when we saw the clothes hanging up outside: I hope they don't mind that I snuck a pic of the model's feet! It was such an amazing trip. There was a piece of machinery in there that was actually still going! I tried to take a video buuuuuut my camera wasn't cooperating (read: I couldn't figure out how). Briefly considered climbing up here until I remembered I'm scared of dying: Peephole to the floor below: There was a lot of broken glass outside (hardly surprising), but there was a fair amount of broken ceramic/pottery, too: We saw a bunch of these weird balls everywhere: They were some kind of dried fruit... I wonder what they were! Stealth shot of Niesho: "You're not taking a picture of me, are you?" We had an absolute blast, and agreed we had to do it again sometime! The photographer from the photo shoot actually suggested a place nearby when he learned we were just there to check out the building/graffiti/etc, so this definitely isn't the last set of urbex photos that will appear on this blog, hahah.

If there's one thing I learned from this trip, it's that I apparently can't hold my camera straight to save my life! I ought to have brought my tripod, anyway, but I'll try to be more aware of that in the future.

Hope you're having adventures of your own!
❤︎