Tour Report: VLF Communications Bunker

The abandoned Nuclear Weapons Depot had been a really great start for our New Year's Tour last year. The weather was perfect, and we had one more open-air location planned before visiting another cold war facility and then heading home.

The second location we had on our list was a fortified VLF communications hub that had been built during World War II for communicating with the submarines in the Atlantic. The hub would have consisted of three antennas on massive fortified substructures. Only one of those substructures had been completed when the construction of the facility was no longer deemed necessary in 1941.

With the exception of the many graffiti, the bunker has not been altered since construction stopped almost 80 years ago.

Accessing the place was easy - there was a hole in one of the entrances that had been walled up at some point in the past.

The shape of the building along with the colors of moss and graffiti and the sunlight made this place fascinating, but also kind of surreal to explore.

It was a nice and easy location from a bad time in history, and I'm glad that we took the time to check it out.

To find out more about the history of this relic from the Cold War and to check out all the photos, click the button below.

Tour Report: U.S. Nuclear Weapons Depot D.

Two weeks into the year 2018, it was time for our first tour of the year. The day before, my mother had spontaneously decided to join us, which totally made sense, because we were going to take her car anyway :)
It was a beautiful sunny Sunday morning. We left early, and we arrived at our first spot after about two and a half hours of driving.
For the first location, we had decided to check out an abandoned nuclear weapons depot of the US Army. Supposedly, it wasn't secured at all and more or less a local recreational area, so entering wouldn't be troublesome, and we expected a nice walk in the park, so to speak.
And that is exactly what we got - a really nice walk in the park.
There were no fences to be climbed, and the entire area was completely open.
We were there at around ten in the morning, but there already were people walking their dogs, and the later it got, the more people were coming and going, some with their children, some with cameras, and some were alone just walking around.
Anyway, we actually did what everyone else was doing - having a good time. We took our time walking around in the morning sun and checking out very corner of the ample premises. We also went a little off-road and got to explore an ammunition depot of the German Luftwaffe, which was situated right next to the nuclear weapons depot.
Shortly before noon, some fog came up and really added a nice touch to the atmosphere. Unfortunately, the fog was gone as quickly as it had come.
Before we left, I made a little climb up the guard tower (of course), and after about two hours of walking through the cold, we arrived back at the car and started heading for the next location.


To find out about the history of this relic from the Cold War and to check out all the photos, click the button below.

Tour Report: Old Wine Inn [Revisit]

For New Year's Eve 2017, we got a visit from my brother-in-law and his girlfriend. Since New Year's Eve that year was on a Sunday, the two arrived on Friday to be able to go on a short tour with us - in addition to our traditional New Year's Eve explore.
We didn't want to get up too early and had planned dinner for the evening, so we had to choose locations not too far from home, which meant that for us, it would have to be revisits of locations we'd already visited.
With many locations, I really like revisits. Almost twenty percent of all my explorations have been to places that I've visited before. To me, the revisit is part of documenting the history of a place, because you can see how it changes over time - either through natural decay or (unfortunately) also through vandalism.
This abandoned inn and this particular visit was no different, although I was surprised at the things that had in fact changed.
It was my third visit tho this place. The first was in September of 2016, the second in October of that same year, and now the third visit - more than a year after visit number two.
We parked the car on the exact same spot that we'd used for the first two visits, and we crossed the street to get to the premises. It was Saturday afternoon, and most people were probably shopping for New Years, so there wasn't too much traffic passing us, and we were able to get to the access without being seen. The window was still open, and we were able to enter without trouble.
The first thing I noticed was that the beautiful old wooden chest was gone - along with the old grandfather clock and some other stuff from the central hall. Moving on, we found that even more stuff had been removed - most notably the bar. Well, not the entire bar, but the fixtures, mirrors and shelves; even the bar stools were gone. Only the bar table itself remained.

We got the impression that sometime in the fourteen moths since our last visit, someone had removed most of the furniture that still was in acceptable or good condition. Since there were no apparent signs of forced entry, and the furniture couldn't have been moved out through the small window that we used to get in, I would think that the owner had sold off the things that weren't too moldy.
So, in this particular case, it seemed that not vandals had taken a liking to this place, but that there was an owner who still had at least some sort of interest in the old inn.

Well, at least the moldy things were still there :)


To check out all the photos from this really cool place, click the button below.

The Bar - October 2016 and December 2017