Month: June 2015

Holy Land USA

/ ginminsky / 3 Comments

Holy Land USA is an 18-acre abandoned Catholic theme park located in Waterbury, Connecticut. How could I pass this one up?

The park is located down a dead end road in a fairly sketchy looking neighborhood. (The grocery store, which we stopped into to grab snacks at the end of the day was something out of Repo Man with only non-brand products). At the end of the road was a large looming entrance gate for the theme park, with several signs notifying that the park was video monitored and trespassers would be prosecuted. My prior research had told me that the signs were only scare tactics and there actually weren’t any cameras. So we parked right in front and started to walk in.

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Arthur Kill Ship Graveyard

/ ginminsky / 2 Comments

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When I first started to date my boyfriend, I decided by our fourth date it was appropriate to drag him to the Arthur Kill Ship Graveyard in Staten Island. It was a little rainy and I didn’t quite anticipate just how muddy it was actually going to be. Wading through knee deep mud is romantic, right? I don’t think I’ve had so much mud caked on my body since playing high school soccer in the rain. But, neither of us lost a boot (we saw some abandoned shoes scattered throughout the space), he didn’t contract tetanus despite scraping his head on a rusty nail, and he still seems to like me, so I call that a success.
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Penn Hills Resort

/ ginminsky / 8 Comments

After threatening to start a blog to chronicle all of the photos I’ve taken on my abandoned travels, I’ve finally getting it together to do so – and to kick this off, I’m starting with my absolute favorite site I’ve visited to date: Penn Hills Resort.

Penn Hills Resort was a honeymoon destination for swinging couples in Analomink, PA. It was originally founded as a tavern in 1944, but slowly expanded into a large resort with over 100 rooms, booming as a destination “for lovers only” in the 1960s and 1970s. They took pride on being a place of “unbridled passion” and their New Year’s Eve party motto was, “No balloon goes unpopped.”
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