I’ve done some urban/abandoned exploration but don’t have a ton of pictures since most of my exploits was pre cell phone era.
I do have a few pictures of a Rockefeller estate in NC that I’d heard about via word of mouth. It’s on a military installation but the gate was not secured so we just drove on in. We were driving down this heavily rutted dirt road in the middle of the woods. It was difficult because I was trying to avoid enormous washouts while simultaneously searching pine tree trunks for faded spray painted arrows directing us to this location I’d “heard tell” about. As I was taking a curve a convoy of military trucks came driving past and I just knew we were fucked as civilians in a training area on a closed military installation.
Thankfully the soldiers just waved as they passed us but we sat there in a nervous panic trying to figure out if we should try to find a way to turn my car around on this dirt road from hell and leave or just keep going. We eventually chose to keep going, not because we were brave but because I couldn’t turn my car around safely. I was fully determined the chicken shit my way out of there as soon as I could get turned around and then we saw the polo barn and we were like nope we’re staying here because this is bad fucking ass.
I backed my car far far up in the trees and brush to try and conceal it in case MPs came looking and we jumped out to explore. It was pretty awesome. We climbed through the polo barn for a good hour before we decided to move on to find more of the buildings.
I wish I had more pictures of the rest of the grounds but they’re not easily accessible from my phone. I do have a few pictures of what I think was the hunting lodge though.
We looked through so many cool buildings, most of them were crumbling and falling apart and because the military base does a lot of urban combat training there they were even more torn up. There was graffiti and trash everywhere from punk ass fuckers exploring and the main house/lodge was burned down several years back by some douche canoes.
We had a blast and went back a few years ago when we were in the area. We didn’t get a mile down the road when some military guys came up in a humvee and waved us down. They warned that MPs were cracking down on civilians exploring the estate because there had been a recent incident and suggested we turn around. So we did. It’s a bummer, there’s an awesome lake and dam that we swam at the first time and this amazing golf course out there. Apparently it was designed by some premier golf course designer and a bunch of golf enthusiasts are foaming at the mouth over its lack of maintenance and because of it’s historical significance. Actually the whole place should be on some kind of protected list but it’s too far gone for restoration which is a huge pity.
