Quick drive to south Florida
- posted in Explores
Having never been to south Florida to explore, I thought it would be a good idea to make a run down there to see what kind of abandonments we can get into. After picking up Scott, we hit the road for Naples…..well, actually just Panera in McDonough for breakfast, but we got there at 10:33am and missed breakfast by a measly 3 minutes. We settled for Starbucks across the street and then hit the road. The only planned stop we had was an old race track that seemingly everyone has been to aside from me. Definitely (as I assumed) not worth the drive alone, but a nice little pit stop a short drive off the highway. Scott wanted a few shots of him in his cycling gear, so it worked out well and didn’t take too long.
Had to make a stop at Brook’s before getting a few hours of sleep, then before we knew it, we were up again at 4am and on our way to an abandoned prison. Before the sun came up, we met Charlie nearby and set off on foot. About 30 minutes later, I was covered in sweat and spider webs, but we were in. Definitely an interesting place. I’m not sure why it’s so heavily patrolled by security, but it looked like they stage training exercises there for riot situations or something. There were blank shell casings and huge holes in the concrete walls everywhere. I don’t see any reason for me to ever go back, but I’m definitely glad I got to see it.
After the successful stop at the prison, Scott headed back to Naples, so Charlie and I went to eat lunch at Pride and Joy and look at graff in Wynwood. One of my personal highlights of the trip was stopping and taking to a few of the homeless people on the street there. After a ton of walking, we decided to head to Miami Marine Stadium to see if we can get in there for the sunset. I’ve been told several times that security keeps a good watch on the place, but there were people all over when we got there, so we just pulled up and parked right next to the stadium. There were tons of people standing/walking around with cameras, so I just grabbed my stuff and started up the stairs. One thing I’ve learned when (allegedly) trespassing is to just try to ignore horns or yelling and just proceed to where I’m going. Well, I heard a car honking repeatedly as I walked up the stairs, so I just didn’t look and kept going…until i hear “NO TRESPASSING!!! NO TRESPASSING!!!”. I figured I should probably look up at that point, and (of course) it’s security yelling at us. I just turned around, walked back down the stairs, and we go down the beach and take a few shots from the sand. Maybe 20 minutes later, we see cars literally drag racing in the parking lot, and doing burnouts and donuts, RIGHT behind the security guard’s jeep! Finally, we’re just like “fuck it! we’ll go take pictures of these guys drag racing”. Luckily we walked over there, because we made our way into the stadium instead.
Not a bad way to finish the day. It started pouring rain right after we left the stadium, so Charlie and I head back to his house to get some rest. After staying up way too late editing all my photos and waking up way too early, we head out to an abandoned amusement park to start our Sunday. It’s actually just a roller coaster now, but we didn’t get in to see it anyway. There was security all over the place, so we decided to go try a hospital instead. It wasn’t fantastic, but it was a new place and it had some nice views. Didn’t take a real long time to explore, so we took off towards the beach to try a few other locations. After seeing the kinda shitty looking locations and getting a little hungry, we decided to not even try getting in and we just ended the day by going to Kush to get some lunch instead. Here are a few shots from the hospital.