The strangest place you've been

[ScooterGuy]

I took a motorbike trip to Hell & back ... 1400 miles, 6 days on my maxi-scooter, this past April.

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]The History of Hell Michigan[/FONT]

Hell was first settled in 1838 by George Reeves and his family. George had a wife and 7 daughters – no reason to call it Hell yet… George built a mill and a general store on the banks of a river that is now known as Hell Creek...
The mill would grind the local farmers grain into flour; George also ran a whiskey still, so a lot of times the first 7-10 bushels of grain became moonshine. In turn, horses would come home without riders, wagons without drivers….someone would say to the wife, where is your husband?[She’d shrug her shoulders, throw up her arms and exclaim, Ahh, he’s gone to Hell!”
In 1841 when the State of Michigan came by, and asked George what he wanted to name his town, he replied, “Call it Hell for all I care, everyone else does.” So the official date of becoming Hell was October 13, 1841...

 

[CuppaJoe]

Sounds like you had a heck of a good time.

Have you met the new forum member called In_Purgatory?

This may not be strange but the worst place I've ever gone to was called W*rk, and I went there over and over again.

 

[jambo101]

On a recent trip out west we stopped at the small town of Macklin Saskatchewan to check out where my wifes mother was born,just a whistle stop of a town but seems to be the Bunnock capital of North America Town Of Macklin | Bunnock
Who knew eh!

 

[Grep]

This is an interesting question. I had to stop and think about what the "strangest place" meant, really. Is it an unusual name, unusual geography, someplace rarely visited or seen, some "place" of a psychological or mystical nature?

A few of the stranger places in terms of geography that I've been to would include:

The Black Rock dry lake, Nevada - desolation and the most deeply etched Milky Way I've seen. Plus it's about the only place to go if you want to drive at 200 MPH on 50 miles of soap.
On top of a volcano (Mt. Shasta, California) - with views like flying, but while standing on earth. A classic and realistic climb.
Inside a volcanic crater (Ubehebe crater, Death Valley N.P., among others). Death Valley is one of my all-time favorite destinations with many strange sights.
Goblin Valley, Utah - a lonely and eerie place.

 

[yakers]

The Black Rock dry lake, Nevada - desolation and the most deeply etched Milky Way I've seen.


.

Oh,Oh,Oh, I got it....same place; different time== Burning Man


And we love going off road around Death Valley, esp Ubehebe crater.

 

[UncleHoney]

The strangest and scariest place.......

Standing on the service platform above an operating 2 megawatt nuclear reactor pool.....totally mesmerized by the unearthly blue glow just 20 feet below.

Or watching technicians work with radioactive materials behind 4 ft thick concrete walls, looking through 4 ft thick glass windows. Materials so radioactive the glass in the windows was turning brown.

 

[Rambler]

The strangest and scariest place.......

Standing on the service platform above an operating 2 megawatt nuclear reactor pool.....totally mesmerized by the unearthly blue glow just 20 feet below.

Or watching technicians work with radioactive materials behind 4 ft thick concrete walls, looking through 4 ft thick glass windows. Materials so radioactive the glass in the windows was turning brown.

Gettin the heebie jeebies just thinking about that...

R

 

[Marquette]

I've been to Hell Michigan and Gay Michigan

and if you're going to Gay, you should go to the Gay Bar.

The Gay Bar in Gay, Michigan

Of course, to be honest, both of them are blown away by Paradise Michigan

Paradise Michigan Chamber of Commerce, in the Upper Peninsula

 

[ladelfina]

One place I felt was strange was traveling through New Brunswick, Cape Breton and PEI in the early 1980s. Though it was summer we hardly ever saw anyone outside (esp. PEI). It was like a neutron bomb had gone off. You'd see houses, but no kids, dogs, people in general. Lots of lawn ornaments, though. We dubbed it "the land of lawn ornaments". One evening on this vacation drive, we saw a hand-written sign that said "Scarecrow Drive-In" and sure enough after a mile or so there was another sign and a yard filled with scarecrows. They weren't classic scarecrows of straw and rags or whatever; they had been done up with kids' plastic Halloween masks, eyeless and eerily faded from the sun. They were set up in front of a old trailer home.. no car in the drive and no one around for miles. This could be a trick of my memory, but I recall a crappy little folding table with a guest book. It was really creepy -- something out of a Stephen King book-- just these 30-40 scarecrows positioned around in the dusk; the twilight made the whitened plastic faces really pop. The scariest was a child scarecrow, with a Casper mask, sitting on a plastic Big Wheel. I'm really sorry I didn't take a picture of the Scarecrow Drive-In.. it was my wierdest place ever.

Another strange place I've been is the crypt under a Cappucin church in Rome:
Spooky Rome: The Capucin Crypt at eternallycool.net
beyond just mummies.. lots of baroque decorations made from bones and skulls.

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Moaning Cavern in Vallecito CA.

We started by walking down a tall corkscrew in the ground and then rappelling 165 feet down from the top of the egg shaped cavern. Hanging from a rope for 15 minutes, slowly lowering ourselves.

Thats about 10' more than the height of the statue of liberty.

The good news is that they've transported and installed a huge circular staircase from a navy ship so its a little easier to get out.

In the main egg shaped cavern is a huge wedge of wall leaning inwards. Miners tried to blast it loose, concerned that it'd fall but they were never able to move it. When the miners first explored the cavern they found a giant mound of animal and people bones on the floor under the corkscrew. Who/whatever had fallen in the opening over the centuries. When they went to place the first charge on that wedge they found a skeleton of a man who had fallen down the corkscrew and broken a leg and several other major bones. Alone, in the dark, and surrounded by the bones of hundreds of people and animals, his only escape was 165' up sheer walls sloped inwards. He managed to crawl all the way to the highest reachable point in the cavern, the top of the 'wedge', about 60' up. With all my parts in good working order and a light on, it was nearly impossible to reach the same point.

We then went on a 3 hour 'adventure tour' that took us through a range of passages and rooms under the 'egg'. In many places you had to wiggle through a hole no larger than we were. For most of the three hours we were scrabbling or wiggling through narrow tubes and tunnels. The thought that should the earth hiccup just a little and move an inch that you'd be stuck or squashed definitely made a little adrenaline. At various points we came across stone formations produced by millions of years of dripping water and minerals, in every shape and color. The most amazing one was getting to peer through a tiny hole into a very tiny little chamber in which resided an incredibly ornate miniature display of mineral deposits.

Since carbon dioxide is heavy, the entire passageway was low oxygen and high CO2. Very hard to breath. At the end we had to rest for about 20 minutes before we could make the stairway climb out.

One of the prettiest things I've ever seen, one of the most arduous physical things I've ever done, and clearly one of the strangest places I've ever been.

Moaning Cavern Photos

MOANING CAVERN: Bill Becher Adventure Trip Photos

 

[Meadbh]

Another strange place I've been is the crypt under a Cappucin church in Rome:
Spooky Rome: The Capucin Crypt at eternallycool.net
beyond just mummies.. lots of baroque decorations made from bones and skulls.

I've been there too and it is top of my spooky list!

Another strange place was Fort Churchill Space Centre, on Hudson Bay. CSA - Fort Churchill – a landmark in Canadian space research
Underground passages, rocket launch bays, and consoles out of the 1950s, and all surrounded by tundra and polar bears. It was just like Dr. Strangelove.

 

[simple girl]

Wow CFB, that sounds so cool! It reminds me a little of one summer I worked as an environmentalist for a kids camp. I had to lead the kids on a caving trip and there sure were some tight squeezes! In fact, we had one spot that was called the "birth canal"...when you came out it was ritual that you cry like a baby, LOL.

Someday when we make a trip to Yosemite we'll have to add Moaning Caverns to the itinerary. I see they are relatively close to each other.

One of the most unusual places we have ever visited were the hongs of Phang Nga Bay in Phuket. These huge limestone caves are accessed via kayak. When you come out of the cave you pop out into a gorgeous lagoon. The most adventurous part is returning - the tides came up (we went on an evening tour), so there was less room to make it through part of the cave. This was expected and part of the adventure of the trip. We had to lay down flat in the kayak as our guide pulled us through holding onto the ceiling of the cave. Yikes! Here's a link to some photos: Phuket Photo Gallery: Patong Beach, Kata and Karon Beach

And here's an example of how you have to lay flat during the last part of the trip:

 

[Nords]

Subic Bay, RP during the Mount Pinatubo eruption(s).

 

[Martha]

When Roe v. Wade was decided ('73? '74?) I was in college at the University of Minnesota. There was a large protest march organized in St. Cloud, Minnesota, a large primarily Catholic town. A group of us decided to organize a counter demonstration in St. Cloud. Well, the St. Cloud demonstration was a couple thousand people, many who were children. The counter demonstration turned out about 20 people. There were two males in our group. They were attacked by a couple of the anti-choice guys and beaten up and chaos reigned briefly. My sign was ripped away. I was scared silly. But the police appeared quickly and all settled down. Never really was sure what set things off. But things were so crowded with us pressed up against the other group. Before hand, lots of yelling had occurred, back and forth

Strange place, strange time.

 

[MGYog]

I took a motorbike trip to Hell & back ... 1400 miles, 6 days on my maxi-scooter, this past April.

Well, I'be been to another Hell in the Grand Caymans.

[/img] http://img.groundspeak.com/waymarking/display/92db7234-dc8a-4bc5-9b23-a770ba2df685.jpg [/IMG]

 

[Achiever51]

The Newgrange Burial site in County Meath, Ireland.
Built around 3200 BC -- hundreds of years before the Pyramids or Stonehenge -- and long before the Celts came to Ireland.

Newgrange Stone Age passage-tomb, Co. Meath, Ireland

The passageway to the central burial chamber is very narrow...and built for short people. The last several meters we had to go sideways and duck to get through the arches. Thinking that it probably took hundreds of people dozens of years to build the place, you have to wonder why it was built. Dunno, but it was one of the most awesome places I've ever seen.

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Someday when we make a trip to Yosemite we'll have to add Moaning Caverns to the itinerary. I see they are relatively close to each other.

They are pretty darn close. Its a worthy day trip. Just plan to be very, very pooped and very, very sore if you do the rappel and the adventure tour. The temperature in the caves is the same year round, and its rather weather proof, so if you're in the area on a particularly hot, cold or rainy day its a good alternative. Its about 60 degrees down there regardless of whats going on outside.

It was pretty interesting hanging from that rope out of the middle of the ceiling, being able to see all sorts of stuff the people who didnt rappel couldnt see, how beautiful it all was, and trying to moderate the dual urges to go slow and look at stuff and the brains basic drive to feed as much rope as I could as fast as I could through the harness to get the hell down before something bad happened.

The real jewel was when you get halfway down on the rope, they turn all the lights off in the cavern and due to the absolute lack of any way for sunlight to get in, its as pitch dark as pitch dark can get.

Phuket

Too easy.

They were attacked by a couple of the anti-choice guys and beaten up and chaos reigned briefly.

"We want to preserve life, and we're going to beat you up to prove it!"

 

[bruce1]

I've been there too and it is top of my spooky list!

Another strange place was Fort Churchill Space Centre, on Hudson Bay. CSA - Fort Churchill – a landmark in Canadian space research
Underground passages, rocket launch bays, and consoles out of the 1950s, and all surrounded by tundra and polar bears. It was just like Dr. Strangelove.

Speaking of Dr. Strangelove and strange places I was in the "Diefenbunker' when it was the most secure bomb shelter in Canada. This was 1975. The facility was ment to house Canada's Government and Military leaders in the event of a nuclear attack. It is now a museum

The Diefenbunker: Then and Now

BRuce

 

[retire@40]

Nobody mentioned the Blue Grotto yet?

 

[Khan]

Northern New Jersey, June 1972.

My first job out of college at Picatinny Arsenal.

All the disadvantages of a a small town and a large city, and none of the advantages of either.

No public transportation (I arrived via bus and had to have my parents wire money so I could buy a car).

 

[lazygood4nothinbum]

martha, i wound up having a group dinner one night about 25 years ago with a professor friend of mine and sarah weddington (who my friend had invited to lecture the school). haven't spoken to her since but we got along really well and talked to each other for most of the evening. she was such a nice lady and smart smart smart. i recall i liked her very much.

as to the strangest places, ok, well, there was the, hmmm, too strange. ok, then there was that time at, damn, still too strange. i'm gonna have to go with south miami right after andrew. almost made me puke so i guess that was strange enough.

 

[Dude]

The first thing that popped into my mind.....

The bottom of Fantastic Pit in Ellison's Cave in Georgia, after repelling all 586 feet straight down

Cave Exploration Pictures, Cave Photos, Photo Gallery, Picture Gallery, Desktop Wallpaper – National Geographic

 

[Caroline]

Colorado City, Utah. It's a Mormon polygamist town in Arizona, north of the Grand Canyon.

Four of us (women in our 30s and 40s) stopped for gas on the way to a backpacking trip and drove through the town. It was full of HUGE houses, all with HUGE vans in the driveways, and with LONG clotheslines in the back yard full of identical rows of jeans and work shirts for the boys and identical gingham dresses for the girls. The boys all had short haircuts, the girls all wore braids.

It was very eerie and we felt VERY out of place.

 

[Martha]

martha, i wound up having a group dinner one night about 25 years ago with a professor friend of mine and sarah weddington (who my friend had invited to lecture the school). haven't spoken to her since but we got along really well and talked to each other for most of the evening. she was such a nice lady and smart smart smart. i recall i liked her very much.

I'm so jealous! She likely was the youngest lawyer to ever have a Supreme Court case and I think it was her first contested case.

 

[FinanceDude]

Bayonne, New Jersey...............

Don't ask...........