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Dinosaurs EVERYWHERE!

by Kaylah Stroup June 26, 2014

You know what one of my favorite things out West was? ALL THE DINOSAURS. Dinosaurs everywhere, man! I think if you’ve been following this blog for any amount of time you’d know that I love giant roadside attractions and dinosaurs are certainly one of my favorites.

The majority of the ones we found were in Arizona and we just happened to stumble upon them, some with help from the Roadside America app. The ones I’m most excited about though? The two in the last pictures! They’re kind of famous. They’ve been featured in a few different movies, most exciting to me being Pee Wee’s Big Adventure. If there’s one place from any one movie that I’ve ever wanted to visit, it was these dinosaurs. So stoked to cross them off my list!

“Dinny”, the Apatosaurus, is actually a gift shop. I was elated to be able to go inside him. It’s surprisingly roomy inside. There were even pressed pennies available to purchase. Score!
xoxo

All of the photos above were taken with a pentax k1000 and Fujifilm 35mm Superia X-TRA 400.

Mansfield Reformatory

by Kaylah Stroup June 24, 2014

A little while back Jeff took me to the Mansfield Reformatory. It’s been on my list of places to visit for a while now. I even swung by just to see the outside when I took a day trip to Columbus last fall but it was closed at the time.

Mansfield Reformatory is a historic prison that’s actually open for tours. The reformatory opened it’s doors originally in September of 1896. It eventually closed on December 31, 1990 as the result of prisoners’ class action suit citing overcrowding and inhumane conditions. In it’s time it housed over 155,000 men! It has the largest free standing steel cell block in the world, six tiers high.

Although the history of this place is super interesting, I’d say most people that visit are probably just there because it’s where parts of The Shawshank Redemption were filmed, I mean that’s super exciting to me!

Mansfield Reformatory is definitely worth a stop if you’re ever in the area! They have ghost walks regularly scheduled, if that’s your kind of thing. (The place is totally creepy enough on it’s own! I wouldn’t go looking for trouble there!) And around Halloween they have a “Haunted Prison Experience”. Neither of those things are my cup of tea, but certainly worth mentioning.
xoxo

Shoe Fence // Rice, California

by Kaylah Stroup June 23, 2014

While we were out West I used the Roadside America app to find lots of neat places to visit. In Rice, California we stumbled upon this shoe fence. I had seen it on the app, didn’t think it looked like it was worth driving out of the way for and forgot about it. As luck would have it, it was right on the road we were cruising down. There was no way we could not pull over to check out this crazy place.

I’ve actually always wanted to visit a shoe tree. I don’t know why. They’re kinda gross but something about it is just interesting to me. This shoe fence blows any shoe tree away. There were SO many pairs of shoes. Some folks even left bras, shirts, and potty training seats in lieu of shoes. Jeff and I didn’t really have anything we wanted to contribute but someone had left some permanent markers on the ground so I had Jeff leave our mark on some pipe.
xoxo

All of the photos above were taken with a pentax k1000 and Fujifilm 35mm Superia X-TRA 400.

Bombay Beach

by Kaylah Stroup June 19, 2014

One of the big stops on this road trip was the Salton Sea. The sea was created in 1905 by a flood from the Colorado River. In the 1950’s and 60’s the Salton Sea was a booming tourist attraction. People flocked from all around to enjoy California’s largest lake. But it didn’t last. Agricultural runoff from surrounding fields increased the salinity. With no outflow it only got worse with time. Now the Salton Sea is a far cry from what it used to be. It’s littered with abandoned buildings and dead fish.

The main area we spent time in was Bombay Beach, a quaint little town nestled 225 feet below sea level. Prone to flooding from the Salton Sea, there is now a large dike protecting the town. As of the 2010 census, 295 residents lived there, down from 366 in 2000. I can only imagine how small the population is now. The side closest to the sea is almost completely abandoned. Bombay beach was intense. It’s like nothing I have ever seen before.

We visited on a very hot day, instead of the dead fish smell that others experience at the Salton Sea, it just smelled like hot trash to me. It was repulsive. I have such mixed emotions about the whole experience. It was so exciting to be able to explore so many abandoned homes, sheds, boats, etc. at once and in such a small area but in the same breath, it’s incredibly sad that this even exists. The homes are full of belongings from the people who just up and left. Did you notice all the clothes in the fifth picture? It’s not like being an abandoned factory, school or any of the other places I’ve explored, this was so personal. There’s something unsettling about being there.

Definitely an experience I won’t soon be forgetting.
xoxo

Polaroids from out West

by Kaylah Stroup June 16, 2014

Well hey there! If you don’t follow me on instagram you might have missed my most recent little adventure. I mentioned it briefly last week on the blog but other wise kept things running smoothly over here. Jeff and I took a liiiittle trip out West. By “little trip” I mean we flew to Denver, Colorado, rented a car and drove around six states including Colorado, Utah, Nevada, California, Arizona, and New Mexico. We spent two nights in a hotel, one night in a wigwam, and the other three in the car. In the six days we were on the road we racked up a whopping 3,204 miles. It was the most incredible trip of my life. I could have never imagined it would be that much fun.

I took so many photos. 18 rolls of 35mm film, quite a few packs of instant film, and a handful of digital photos. The 35mm I haven’t gotten developed yet. I’m trying to compare prices a bit because that’s a lot of film. There will definitely be a plethora of blog posts about this trip. I seriously can’t even remember all the things we did off the top of my head, it takes looking back through my photos to help me remember because we just did SO MUCH. To start off the posts from my big trip, here are some random photos I took with my polaroid 600 and some Impossible Project color frame film.

I have photos of almost all of these things taken with my other camera as well. I’m sure there will lots more dinosaurs and kitschy roadside things on the blog shortly since the desert just seems to be full of them, it’s kind of crazy!

I can’t wait to share more soon!
xoxo

Its a jungle out there…

by Kaylah Stroup June 9, 2014

Soon after I met Jeff he asked me if I knew about the dinosaurs in Mentor. Mentor is halfwayish between where I live now and where I used to live. It was where I did all my shopping before moving, and I’d definitely consider myself pretty darn familiar with the area so for me to not know about big dinosaurs was kind of strange. Truth be told, I didn’t believe him. But just like the time he told me the glass studio had a pet chicken they let run around (they do) and that the West Side Market sold fruit I’d never seen before (they do), there are dinosaurs in Mentor. Better than that, there were tons of different animals. It was like a mini version of South of the Border and I’m pretty sure I made it abundantly clear how much I loved that place.

It’s crazy how there are still things out there in an area I’ve lived near my whole life that I still don’t know about.
xoxo

fog

by Kaylah Stroup May 27, 2014

One of my favorite things to shoot is fog. The opportunity rarely arises for me, I think the last time I took fog pictures I really loved was way back in 2012. (See here, they’re still some of my favorites!) Last week on the way over to Jeff’s place I saw it was pretty foggy at the park. We had planned an evening of working, me on the blog and him editing photos, but I guess neither of us could resist the fog so we headed out to the lake.

I feel so lucky to live in such a beautiful city, to be right on the lake and surrounded with so many great parks! Cleveland rocks.
xoxo

the BEST estate Sale

by Kaylah Stroup May 26, 2014

It’s no secret that I love estate sales. Now that I’m living in Lakewood I’m finding that there are A LOT more sales nearby than where I used to live. I’ve had some pretty awesome luck at the sales too. Even if I don’t find anything I really just enjoy snooping around people’s homes. But a few weekends back I hit the jackpot. I’ve always said my dream estate sale would be a doctors and as luck would have it I finally got to attend one.

It was probably the craziest estate sale I’ve ever been to. Jeff and I arrived super early in order to get numbers. I got number six, which for some dumb reason really made this other lady mad but that’s another story, and Jeff got nine. We left for coffee and hot chocolate then came back about twenty minutes before the sale started. Since we had such low numbers we were let in as soon as the doors opened but I watched as someone immediately grabbed the few things I had seen online and had counted on buying. It was a mad house inside. The sale was packed with amazing things but as quick as you could spot them people were slapping sold stickers on them. I did manage to find a few spectacular pieces to buy that day but I wasn’t satisfied…

The next day, presuming everything would be picked over but at least it wouldn’t be crowded, I headed back. I arrived around noon, three hours after the sale started, and it was empty. I was the only shopper. Even better than that they had set out a bunch of new stuff. I scored…BIG TIME. I have literally never found so many amazing things in one place. I’m over the moon about my purchases. Here’s what I got…

A raised relief of Alaska! I adore raised relief maps. I only own a few of them but I’m always on the look out. They tend to go for pretty expensive online. This didn’t have a price tag on it so I was prepared to leave it behind if they wanted too much. When I asked I was more than tickled with the response of “two bucks.” Heck yes!

A model heart was one of the things I was really counting on getting at this sale. Sadly the one I wanted was way out of my price range. The next day I went back to find this one sitting on the table for $10. Aw, yessss!

A brain! Originally in eight pieces, for teaching purposes not because it was broke, I had to glue it together into two main pieces so it would sit nicely.

Found this on the second day as well. I’m so happy to add this piece to my collection. I actually already own a matching foot. I didn’t realize it until I got home, it even came with the original booklet that has all the parts labeled. Quite an awesome find.

My favorite piece of the day! Even the little old ladies at the checkout were admiring it. The brain is removable and comes apart into four pieces so you can see the insides. It’s quite heavy.

I’m still riding high on this amazing estate sale score. I can’t believe all the awesome things I was able to get at one sale. What a dream come true!
xoxo

If you’re looking for estate sale tips, check out this post. It’s from 2011 but not too much has changed.

found on the beach // lighters

by Kaylah Stroup May 5, 2014

The other day I spent some time picking trash up on the beach and realized I seemed to be finding A LOT of lighters. Every few steps I was finding one. I decided to pick all of them that I found up in hopes that I’d maybe find enough to take a special picture of them on their own. By the time I was done, maybe an hour and a half later, I had found fifty lighters total. Crazy, right? Of course, I had to lay them out in color order for the photo.

Aside from lighters, another thing I seem to find a lot of are combs. Beach combin’! Hehe! I also find a lot of tampon applicators but I don’t think I’ve reached the level of crazy where I think picking up tampon applicators on the beach is acceptable… yet.

Buuuuut I have reached the level of crazy where I’ve decided to keep all of the lighters I found that day and all of the lighters I find on the beach until the end of summer so that I can take a huge group photo of them. The handful of times I’ve been back to the beach since this time I’ve found maybe five or six more each time. Obviously that’s nowhere close to as many as the first time but it still seems like a lot. Anyone want to take a wild guess how many my end of summer group photo will have? I’m super curious myself.

xoxo

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