Places You Go
 

Now that I can afford gas I've been exploring the outskirts of my hometown a lot more. My family used to take me camping out there for weeks at a time when I was younger but all of my memories before 10 years old are so hazy. Going out there recently has been mind blowing and completely novel, it's like I'm seeing it all for the first time again. We've spent every weekend camping out here since early April now and don't plan on breaking the streak until summer's over.

Here's a detailed and well labelled map of my hood:

http://i.imgur.com/pd6M2OV.jpg

In the early mornings just before sunrise I take off out there alone to look for weird **** off trail and find something almost every time, whether that means an insanely complex 3 story tree house 50 feet up a tree full of books and furniture, a network of caves and creeks, amateur survival shelters, bones hanging from ropes in massive hollowed out stumps burnt from the inside, or dissected animal carcasses... Sometimes it's absolutely terrifying, sometimes it's the most relaxing thing I've ever known.

Pictures of crazy ****:

A view of the valley from a mountain at the beginning of the creek stretching down to the border.

http://i.imgur.com/xRw1iRc.jpg?1

The abandoned quarry where we **** up our vehicles racing and doing miscellaneous dumb ****.

http://i.imgur.com/U04fJq5.jpg?1

A small swimming pool sized dam at the bottom of a waterfall, 10 minutes up the mountain bordering the quarry.

http://i.imgur.com/EdeettH.jpg?1

Deep in the woods, somewhere out there.

http://i.imgur.com/vC224XB.jpg?1

And Tree Weaver, the strangest thing I've ever encountered. 20 minutes down the creek towards the border.

http://i.imgur.com/ulvcm24.jpg?1

Where do you all **** around? Any interesting spots near or in your town? Places that draw unusual amounts of drunken bull****? Post pictures if you can, you all have camera phones, use them.

I love going fishing down in the Outer Banx some good stuff right. Lot of the little creeks & rivers around here are great for trout, too. But back in Texas there's a place coming in from the gulf and it's a river type thing but there's a sandbar which separates the gulf from the river. That is an EXCELLENT place to go fishing, especially if you get out of your boat right on the sandbar and fish.

My best friend has a cabin in the Catskills. We are up there multiple times a year.

Use to hang out up in The White Mountains of New Hampshire a ton years back. That and white water rafting up in northern Maine each spring when they'd have the dam releases.

Beautiful pics, Epoch. That Tree Weaver hut is very unusual.

Escaping in London is a rather different affair - but the river provides slight relief from the claustrophobia of city living. (Apologies for big, wide-sweep pic: )



Not as rugged or spectacular as the places you guys go, but you can walk for miles along the riverbank footpaths. In fact, I remember one time I got a stone in my shoe, which shows you just how wild the terrain can be.

Joking aside, this range of low hills - charming rather than spectacular- is a train-ride away from the city. After a week in the office it feels like Paradise !

http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk...friston059.jpg

A couple of blocks away from where I live, the road ends and is blocked off. If you take that beyond the roadblock you come across all kinds of trails and ****. Yesterday I went to this dried up pond to do some smoking and jamming with the mates only to find out that it wasn't dried up anymore. It was really beautiful since it was overcast and the water was undisturbed and reflected it brilliantly.

http://i.imgur.com/70OXC8H.jpg?1

I'm gonna have to see if I can get some pics from campus wetlands/swamp where I've been doing research this summer.

This is an awesome thread.

@EPOCH6

Anyone ever tell you you take great wilderness pictures?

Thanks man, pretty alright for Nexus 5 cellphone shots.

Getting hype as **** for this weekend, my pap and I are going to do a lap around Harrison Lake, which is about a ~230 kilometre trip, alternating quad / dirtbike. It's basically the equivalent of circumventing the entire city of Vancouver three times, if Vancouver consisted entirely of mountains and winding off-road trails.

Many more pictures will be taken, it's gonna be some serious Lord of the Rings ****, except Gandalf is riding a furious Polaris Sportsman 500 instead of beautiful white stallion.

http://i.imgur.com/MjtoS20.jpg?2

^I so envy you^

Nice photos Frownland, I'll pop some of mine up later.

Saturday's Great Harrison Lake Pilgrimage of 2015 was indeed a strong competitor for Best Day Ever™.
****ing unreal, these lands. Mind boggling. ~200 kilometers off-road, 5 hours straight behind the handlebars.

Will remember that day for the rest of my life.

http://i.imgur.com/NjfrdPh.jpg?1
http://i.imgur.com/CNiNgsG.jpg?1
http://i.imgur.com/H20e3Se.jpg?1
http://i.imgur.com/6kTykYL.jpg?1

Wow. Great stuff man.

I've been living in a rural area for a few months now, with lots of fields and forests and all that and felt awesome wandering around here.
But holy crap, it's got nothing on all that amazing wilderness that's been posted here. I envy you Epoch.

I always go to Virginia every summer, so I'll take some pics on the way, and the week I spend there. It's absolutely gorgeous.

Back from 5 days of exploring and camping, here are some pictures:

http://i.imgur.com/O6pesnN.jpg?2

I'll put the rest in a spoiler:

Read a post online a few weeks ago about a system of goblin caves just outside of town, figured I'd head out on my own and try to find it Sunday morning. Didn't take long to find the main cave, which is big enough to fit the entire crew and a fire pit. From there on I basically followed the edge of the mountain keeping an eye out for openings, they were everywhere, about half of them large enough to crawl into. It was bizarre, the mountain is basically swiss cheese on the inside, about 15 feet into a cave it would transition from a tunnel barely large enough to squeeze through into a small room large enough to stand up in, usually with 3 or 4 other new tunnels branching out of the walls. Most of the cave floors were dry, no insects, no stink, the ceilings were all made of damp limestone that almost felt squishy. Kind of surprised it didn't spook me more than it did, no cell service, none of the homies know where these caves are yet, no first aid kit on me, and some of these tunnels went straight down dozens of feet into complete darkness.

The guy who wrote the post about this place jokingly warned of a marked cave called the "Hall of Arachnids". But the post was written in 2007 or something, when I got there yesterday the place had pretty much been abandoned, it is no longer maintained, no signs, trail markings, or signs of regular human activity at all besides some old log bridges and staircases that have clearly passed their prime. I had forgotten about this warning entirely, especially since there were no signs anywhere to jot my memory.

One of the cave entrances was a nearly vertical 3x3 ft. tunnel starting right where the mountain met the river's edge, leading up into blackness. Somebody had strung a large red rope with climbing knots up at the top of the tunnel hanging down to the entrance, it felt sturdy enough, so I started climbing. About 12 feet up the tunnel leveled off into a horizontal crawl, I started shimmying through on my belly, around an S bend, and onward, stopping when I noticed the massive undisturbed cobweb draped across the entire tunnel. I immediately remembered the post and knew where I was.

I look up, the ceiling is moving, I look to my side, the walls are moving.

Daddy longlegs, everywhere, probably a hundred, each one separated by maybe a few inches. I didn't even make a sound, just tensed the **** up and started shimmying my ass backwards, still on my stomach, wondering how many spiders I was smearing into the dirt with my belly. This cave was tight too, I wasn't feeling claustrophobic until that moment, sweating up a storm knowing that it wasn't going to be easy climbing down that tunnel, especially with my new knowledge of the living wallpaper. Made it out, shivered, and continued on to check out the rest of the caves. ****ing terrifying.

http://i.imgur.com/XkgkHSv.jpg?1
http://i.imgur.com/lsA25zq.jpg?1

MORE PICTURES:

I now hate where I live. Thanks.

Some pretty damned cool stuff up there man. Like Chula says, at least I can live voraciously through you.

That cave looks awesome. All your pictures are great.

Edit: At least it was only daddy long legs.

That cave is definitely badass. I've wanted to go spelunking for so long but I've only gone into one weak cave at the beach.

Some lovely pics in this thread.

I live in a pretty area so don't need to go far. I walk the dogs here almost every day:
http://www.llanberis.com/visitwales/dolbadarn.jpg

Around 3 miles from my house is this ridge which I've scrambed a few times, never fails to scare the hell out of me, the video doesn't really capture the sense of exposure you feel up there (skip to around 31 mins for the best bit):

Wow that's amazing, super jealous. I plan on living in a mountainous region in the future.

Beautiful area, that video nearly gave me vertigo, crazy.

Tomorrow morning I'm planning on heading about 45 minutes out of town to explore Carolin Gold Mine, a massive series of mine shafts that went out of service in 1984. Looks absolutely terrifying.

Mines are wicked. But they do scare me. Tight spaces freak me out.

Finally took some pictures from research last week.. Measuring sediment and water flow in and out of campus lake, Lake Fred.

Stockton University - NJ Pine Barrens territory.

I have gone through many of the gorgeous places to visit. But out of them the natural beauty of Cox's Bazar surprised me a lot. Last month I had that experience. Had gone there with all of my family members. Really amazing!

Ended up spending two mornings in a row exploring the abandoned gold mine, about 5 hours total inside the mountain.

Incredible.

I had a hard time convincing the crew to join me on this one, there was a high possibility that we'd be driving 45 minutes out of town only to find a locked gate and security patrol, but my buddy Dawson was eager to come along anyway. We leave early Saturday morning, 7:30 AM. The Coquihalla is one of the most beautiful highways in the world, as well as one of the most dangerous, fortunately for us the highway was nearly deserted that morning. 45 minutes later, 77 kilometers into the mountains, we arrive at our exit which doubles back and swings underneath the highway, spitting us out at the entrance to an unmarked dirt road winding up the mountain side. The road conditions were quite poor, no possibility for anything less than a 4x4 or RWD truck making it up, Hershel took it quite well but I did bump one of my rear tailpipes on a rock, once again knocking it loose from the muffler, but it's an easy fix.

6 kilometers of deer sightings, cliffside driving, waterfalls, and pot holes later we finally come to the fork in the road, going right based on what I believe I saw in some guys YouTube video from 2011. Sure enough the road winds down into a small valley and from behind the tree line emerges a city block long rusty conveyor belt, leading out from hole in the mountain up to a sickly green hut perched atop a massive rusty gravel silo. The tension starts building in my gut in anticipation of a work force ready to tell us to turn around and go home.

It's completely abandoned, not a soul in sight.

http://i.imgur.com/BikgikE.jpg

We pull up to the base of the silo, a large metal building, the jagged walls ripped apart by years of shotgun blasts and collapsing machinery. Bright orange spray paint invites us in at each entrance, "DANGER KEEP OUT / NO TRESPASSING". Inside the walls are all long collapsed, each room held up only by bare steel. The ground is littered with rusty fasteners, bolts, nails, ore samples, and beer cans. All of the copper has been ripped from every breaker box, the walls have been tagged many times over, and nothing seems to be where it originally belonged.

http://i.imgur.com/boKd8zU.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/sU87xeN.jpg

We follow a conveyor upstairs into a series of pitch black hallways, lit only by our headlamps and the occasional ray of sunlight peaking through a bullet hole. It's silent for the most part, both of us seem to have our ears perked up listening for the distant hum of an approaching dirtbike or pickup. Every foot step on the rusty steel floor sends a metallic echo throughout the building, every once in a while a crow flies out of a corner and scares us ****less. A bridge leads across to another building and we follow the stairwell back down to the exit.

Following the conveyor in the sky we find ourselves at the entrance to the lowest level of the mine, almost completely buried in rubble, permanently flooded and inaccessible. The walls are lined with scaffolding hanging from chains anchored in the solid rock above, a dead bird floats by in the polluted colorful cave water.

http://i.imgur.com/Q9c3wKu.jpg

We follow a dirt road up the side of the mountain to the level two entrance and are immediately startled by a massive plume of ice cold air rushing out of the mine shaft.

http://i.imgur.com/7hfCdWm.jpg

We climb over the rubble surrounding the entrance and start following the tracks into the mountain. By the time you're barely 30 ft into the shaft you can already see your breath in the air. It's pitch black, even with the entrance of the mine still in sight the light only makes it about 50 ft in. The air is moist and chilling, water flows down through holes in the ceiling and pipes sticking out of the walls, the ground is muddy and soft but the mine cart tracks offer a dry walkway. We find a pipe with a valve that still works, shooting pressurized water across the mine shaft. The tracks fork left and right occasionally, leading you into rooms full of rusty mining equipment, machinery, and tool shelves. Every once in a while you come across a long ladder leading up through a tunnel in the ceiling or down into the ground, risers that take you to the upper and lower levels from inside. The ladders are wooden and long rotted, clearly not worth the risk of climbing.

http://i.imgur.com/Km8VO2d.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/EgKcmLo.jpg

After about half an hour of walking we eventually reach a dead end, turning around to hike up to level 3 outside. The entrance is much larger and the ice wind even more intense. Some years ago the company that currently owns the property hauled a few concrete blocks up there to keep the Jeeps and Hummers out, people seem to have successfully winched one out of the way, leaving enough room for dirtbikes and ATVs to squeeze by. This mine shaft is a lot larger than the level below, there are many videos on YouTube of people driving full sized 4x4 vehicles inside of the mine.

http://i.imgur.com/oLPyhCi.jpg

We head inside, exploring each fork to the left and right, we find what seems almost like a break room, a fridge has been knocked over onto the ground, it's filled with brazing rods for welding and somebody has written on the freezer door in permanent marker "DON'T PUT BRAZING RODS IN THE FRIDGE". Dawson gets a chuckle out of this as he recalls a similar story from when he was working in the labor camps up North earlier this year. We remember that we're a kilometer inside of a pitch black abandoned mine shaft 6 kilometers off the highway and the laughter fades, we continue on...

http://i.imgur.com/KE8BiX6.jpg?1

http://i.imgur.com/XPMyeNh.jpg

Eventually we reach a blown out section, the shaft is blocked by a section of large boulders stacked halfway to the ceiling. It's unclear whether they were put there or if they fell from the ceiling. I climb up one of the boulders and can barely make out a wooden wall at the end of the rubble and a small passageway along the wall. I tell Dawson to wait and that I'll let him know if it's a dead end. I climb over the rubble to the wall and work my way through the passageway, the shaft opens up again into a full sized tunnel, I yell back to Dawson letting him know the coast is clear. This section of the mine is much scarier, some of the forks lead to tunnels which have very clearly collapsed in on themselves. We eventually end up in a room with a big wooden shelf and a wooden wall with a short ladder leading up to a body sized opening.

I climb up the wall and into the opening, following a tunnel barely large enough to crouch through. The tunnel opens up and comes to a ledge, I look up, left, right, and down, pure darkness far beyond the limits of my headlamp. My stomach flips and I immediately get vertigo. I'm speechless, Dawson calls out to me asking if it's a dead end, I stutter and tell him to get up here quick. He crawls up and shines his more focused flashlight beam around the cavern. It's literally hundreds of feet wide and hundreds of feet tall, like a small airplane hanger underground. I throw a rock over the ledge, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 seconds before it hits the ground and echoes up loudly filling the cavern with sound. It's far too dark to take pictures in here, unfortunately I have none, even with our flashlights the walls are far too distant to be picked up by a ****ty cellphone lens. We just kind of stand there silently for a couple of minutes, listening to the distant trickle of water at the bottom of the pit.

We eventually muster up the words to agree on moving on, both of us now utterly terrified, shaking, overwhelmed with awe. We climb back through the hole in the wall and work our way backwards through the tunnels to the last fork in the shaft, this time heading the other way. More forks in the shaft, each one leading to another massive hanger sized cavern, painted signs at each tunnel entrance warning "DANGER KEEP OUT", we came across 5 more before reaching a dead end forcing us to turn around, one of them was sloped gradually enough that I managed to climb down, discovering a graveyard of beer cans that must have been tossed down from above.

Sufficiently spooked and rapidly approaching the limits of our balls, we decide that we had seen enough for the day and start heading back to the entrance. We were inside this level for at least an hour, on the way back we discovered a shaft branching off and spiraling downward that I'll have to explore next time.

The drive back to the Homeland was quiet, the mines had rendered us damn near speechless. It was so much more than I expected and possibly the most incredible thing I've ever seen in my life.

^ Cool pics. Cooler story. :)

Last week I made a visit on Sundarbans. Amazing and historical place in Bangladesh. Really enjoyable.

Same place I posted previously, but from ground level under a brooding sky. Nice old castle in the right in both images.

http://i61.tinypic.com/102uqvn.jpg

http://i62.tinypic.com/2qsxjwn.jpg

Where is that? I don't see trees like the one on the left in the first picture out here very often.

In my absence from the forum I've been pretty busy. My employer flew me out to Toronto to troubleshoot our largest cellular coverage system, at YYZ, the largest airport in Canada. First time I've flown anywhere in 10 years, I don't travel outside my neck of the woods very often, so it was pretty intimidating, especially considering I was out there on my own. Found some time after my shift to catch train from the airport to the bottom of the CN Tower and wander the streets of downtown Toronto for a bit, here are some pictures from the trip:

http://i.imgur.com/bIE55tu.jpg?1

http://i.imgur.com/Xh0KNDA.jpg?1

http://i.imgur.com/8lVUTud.jpg?1

http://i.imgur.com/LVTu8b4.jpg?1

http://i.imgur.com/RXGgg3F.jpg?1

http://i.imgur.com/vsBBYQg.jpg?1

And a few more pictures from the last couple of weeks back in the Fraser Valley (BC).

http://i.imgur.com/mbQw4Zj.jpg?1

http://i.imgur.com/HICouRs.jpg?1

http://i.imgur.com/ZIxS8cS.jpg?1

Last week visited the 2 beautiful place Cox's Bazar (sea beach) and Sundarbans as well. Enjoyed a lot there with all of my family members.

Here´s a pic of your Cox´s Bazaar, Ashwell. It looks pretty nice though to be honest, I´m not a big fan of beach scenery.

http://thedevelopmentadvisor.com/tda...al-Tourism.jpg

Hey thanks a for attaching the scenery here. LOL!

Which do you like basically @Lisnaholic?

You´re welcome, Ashwell. Is Cox´s Bazaar your nearest coastal resort? Mine may actually be similar in some ways:-


But what I actually like are towns that show some history and mystery, like Dubrovnik, for example, which I was lucky enough to visit before it was besieged by the Serbs in 1991:-

http://touristforum.net/media/touris...ubrovnik-1.jpg

But my favourite scenery, my true enthusiasm is for The English Lake District:-

http://www.amblesideadventure.co.uk/...k1-665x362.jpg

These hills, for instance, are the Langdale Pikes and like much of the area you can walk all over them because there are open to the public. No insects or animals to worry about, and no trees to block the view; just a lot of fresh air and exhilaration.

Cox's Baazar looks lovely. The pic reminds me of a beach in Nigeria I visited.

Always nice in the Lake District. All those colours. And air good enough to drink.

^ Yes, Nigeria - Bangladesh - Mexico; seems like ideal beach scenery doesn´t vary that much around the world. I think that´s partly why I find it so uninteresting.

Enthusing about the Lakes, though, is something I can do for hours, having spent many holidays based in either Ambleside or Keswick. I wonder which areas you know, Mr.Charlie?

This looks like a beautiful place to visit.

I don't know the area, but have been to the Lake District a few times on family holidays as a child. It's a real pretty area and not too dissimilar to north Wales where I now live. Same raw and rugged landscape, same weather, same air quality.