Let's Go Places: The Rust Belt Travel Guide!!!

 

Friends, I got you something for Christmas.  It's a dedicated page on the blog that is a one stop shop listing of all of the cool places that I've found on my home turf.  Announcing: The Rust Belt Travel Guide.  I'll keep it updated in real time as I continue to go places.

When I first started getting out of the house to see what was in my backyard, I was amazed at what I was finding, but I didn't think that it was very good blog material.  The odds that anyone reading is jumping out of their chair and saying "DANG!  She went to an abandoned rail tunnel in central Ohio???  Well look out cuz Ima drop everything and go to the abandoned rail tunnel in central Ohio!!!" seemed pretty slim.  I felt that it was good enough to write about the concept of getting out and seeing what you have locally.

Over time I've changed my tune.  I still hope very much that you will venture out and see the treasures that you have in your neck of the woods, but also this stuff is just too good not to share.

I'll continue to write up my past travels and add new ones, and since we're already here, let me give you a "quickie" and tell you about the time that I went to an abandoned rail tunnel.

In the fall of 2022 I talked my family into doing a girls' weekend at Hocking Hills State Park.  Due to our schedules we all traveled separately, so I came up with a list of things to check out on the way there.  The internets told me about Moonville Tunnel, which is an old railway tunnel in the town of Moonville, which became a ghost town in the 1940s.  As soon as I found out about it, I involuntary nodded my head and said (to myself) "I am so going there".

I fired up the GPS and was zipping along the back roads of Ohio.  I turned on to a single lane gravel road that went on for a good bit and finally I arrived at the tunnel.  The long, dark, supposedly haunted tunnel.

Now I will say that it was very cold in the tunnel, but there was nothing else that was giving off "haunted" vibes.  The inside is covered with very bright and cheerful graffiti.

Finally I arrived on the other side of the tunnel.

The trail leads to another abandoned rail tunnel, the Kings Station Tunnel.  Supposedly you can drive to it, but when I put it in to my GPS it took me on another gravel road in the middle of nowhere and I couldn't find the tunnel.

On the hiking path the tunnels are about 3 miles apart, so a bit longer than I had time for that day.  I also wasn't too keen on venturing out further by myself.  There were a few other people around but not very many people, it was far off the road, and there was no cell signal.  My spidey senses told me that I was in the zone of "there is such a thing as being too alone".  I went back to my car and headed to our cabin in the woods with a hot tub and commenced Girls' Weekend.

But it was a really cool place and I'm hoping to explore it further one day with company.