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Ever find anything "unusual" while wheeling?

2M views 4K replies 1K participants last post by  PitStop 
#1 · (Edited)
I was out in the woods in northern Cali the other day and came across a huge USAF radar facility. This is nowhere near any military bases.

----Update 6-10-06, found this info about it on the interweb: http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/systems/an-fps-118.htm /Update----

A friend of mine said he once found what he believes is an old missle silo inside a chain link and barbed wire fence out in the woods, also in northern Cali, but he couldn't remember how to get back to it to show it to me.

What strange things have you found?
 
#667 ·
I’ve never found any thing really while out wheeling. Stumbled across abandon towns and what not, but nothing excited or scary, expect once. We never found any thing, expect we were found. Shortly after I got married the wife and I took a trip up to Canada. We had planed to drive up to Alaska, but half way though British Columbia we decided to drive across Canada instead. Thought was we’d take back roads and just enjoy our selves.

The trip hadn’t be planned well, but we had planed to camp out, see the wilderness and just have fun. Brought camping gear, food, fuel, the whole nine yards. So we’re way up in the northern part of BC, passed the 55th parallel and we decide to make camp for the night. Find this old logging road, run a few miles down it and set up camp.

Was a beautiful spot, not to far from this lake. There was no one around for miles it was great. Get a fire going, wife is cooking dinner, I’m drinking my first legally bought beer (since tight *** Americans wont sell it to you unless your 21). We eat, and turned in for the night. Fooled around like any newly weds would and finally fall asleep some time in the night.

I’m sound asleep and I’m awakened by this loud THUMP hitting the ground. At first I thought I was dreaming and was about to fall back asleep when I herd it again. By this time I’m a little freaked as to what could be making these noise in the middle of no where. I pop outa the tent naked with my mag light and flip it on and proceed to confront what were may be out there.

What lands not more than 5feet away from me is a bolder the size of a tire. I shine the light in the direction that I thought it came from and nothing was there. I knew the rock hadn’t been there before and I’m sure it came from some where. Never herd any one running away and never herd another vehicle leaving the area.

We through every thing in the back of the ZJ and took off back to the paved road so fast and half naked. By this time I proceeded to call the trip over and we headed for home. We crossed the border in Blain Washington where the customs officer asked us what were did, where we were, and how the trip was. I gave him a quick run down of the events of the night before. He just laughed and said it was Big Foot saying hello.
 
#671 · (Edited)
Hey new to the board but this thread brought me in. Things I have found........

Stolen lexus burned so far out on a trail that I had to walk to it.
Plenty of abandoned houses and buildings.
While fishing in a river snagged on something, waded out to unravel my line ( new rooster tail, didnt want to lose it) found it caught on a mid 70's ford truck in a deep pocket of the river.
A VW beetle ( whats with these things being in the most remote places?) way out in the middle of no where. I had been hiking and came across it. No idea how or why.
There have been others but can't remember right off hand.

Awsome thread btw.
 
#673 ·
Generally, they're found on road dead, not in the middle of a river :D
 
#674 ·
several broken tow straps and a pry bar.

but most interesting by far is the half demolished cash register me and some friends found at a local mud hole. it was destroyed just enough to get the cash tray out, which lay empty right next to the register. im sure theres an interesting story behind that...
 
#676 ·
back in 2006 a couple of my friends and me were up north in michigan..near mio if anyone knows where that is. we parked are jeeps just off the trail when we came across what only can be described as the most beautiful and strangest thing i have ever seen. in the middle of the woods was a clearing about the size of a football field. filled...and i mean filled with 50's era willys(sp) if i had to guess i would say about 200-300 of them. all lined up neatly. most in real good shape. no the very north was a watch-tower. being the stupid guy i am i climbed up it only to find the remains of a guard(im gussing he was a guard cause of his clothing). when i seen that i got a chill and got down as fast as i could. as we treked deeper into this yard we all got a strange feeling and decided to leave. none of us had cameras at the time.

now fast forward 5 months later. we decided to go there with cameras and take pics cause its just an awesome sight. well much to our amazement its all gone. nothing remains. to this day it still freaks me out and i get the chills just talking about it. does anyone from michigan know what the hell this was? any info would be great.

also for people in michigan are there any good sites i could check out while off roading. if so just send me a pm.

thanks for reading my story
 
#708 ·
back in 2006 a couple of my friends and me were up north in michigan..near mio if anyone knows where that is. we parked are jeeps just off the trail when we came across what only can be described as the most beautiful and strangest thing i have ever seen. in the middle of the woods was a clearing about the size of a football field. filled...and i mean filled with 50's era willys(sp) if i had to guess i would say about 200-300 of them. all lined up neatly. most in real good shape. no the very north was a watch-tower. being the stupid guy i am i climbed up it only to find the remains of a guard(im gussing he was a guard cause of his clothing). when i seen that i got a chill and got down as fast as i could. as we treked deeper into this yard we all got a strange feeling and decided to leave. none of us had cameras at the time.

now fast forward 5 months later. we decided to go there with cameras and take pics cause its just an awesome sight. well much to our amazement its all gone. nothing remains. to this day it still freaks me out and i get the chills just talking about it. does anyone from michigan know what the hell this was? any info would be great.

also for people in michigan are there any good sites i could check out while off roading. if so just send me a pm.

thanks for reading my story
Did you ever find out anything?
 
#677 · (Edited)
Went into a random cave we found after checking out these trails at night.Turned out it was the back door to a National Archives center that was built in these old limestone mines. Needless to say we got out in a hurry.

Edit:
 
#678 ·
Today we found about 5 old destroyed cars that are filled with bullet holes and have been burned, about 30 Trac Phone packages with the phones stolen, an abandoned flat bed from a semi, the front license plate from a truck, a six story building shaped like a ship and made of steel tubing and planks of wood, some tree houses and zip lines made out of old winch cables and snatch blocks, and some stolen street signs. Can anyone top that?
 
#680 ·
Next time we go out I'll take some. You guys should see what some of these rednecks have put together with random crap. There are even swings made of and old bench and some planks that use winch cables. Redneck engineering is pretty damn cool, but kinda sketchy.
 
#681 ·
I was out the other day and we went up to what is now a radio relay tower and the top of a peak called Magic Mountain. It is in southern California and it is fairly close to the theme park Six Flags Magic Mountain. Some say that the theme park is named after the peak and that it originally had some significance to Native Americans for magical reasons.
This is the location. The tower is in the lower left near the water tanks.

After doing some research when we got home I learned that it had been the site of a Nike - Ajax missile base. So we went back the following weekend to get some pictures of anything that might be left of the base. We found what appeared to be two silos on pads. Here is a closer look.
You can't really see from that view because they are in shadow, but on the downhill side of the pads there is a tunnel (now sealed up) that comes horizontally out of the bottom of the silo tube. This tunnel is probably 3 or 4 feet in diameter. The silo itself is about 20 feet deep and at least 12 feet in diameter. At the top there are some rings of tubing that are about 6 inches in diameter that circle the upper part of the silo tube. There are nozzles sticking out and pointing diagonally downward into the silo tube. It looks like they are for either cooling or fire suppression. I took some pictures of this that I can post if you are interested.

So cool I thought those must be the Nike missile silos. But when I went home from that trip I did even more research and found that they could not be Nike silos.

I found this note on the Fort Macarthur website that seems to know a lot about the Nike bases in and around Los Angeles.

LA-98 Magic Mountain-Lang (Saugus)/1955-1963/1B, 2C/ACQR
IFC-Located in the Angeles National Forest on top of Magic Mountain. L&A-Located south of State Highway 14 in Soledad Canyon (Lang Station). Though the battery was closed by 1963, the Admin area was used till the early 1970s. IFC site is now used as microwave relay. The L&A site is being used by a cement company and may be extensively modified.
So based on that, the site I was at was the IFC (Integrated Fire Control) site that had the radars and the computers but not any missiles. The Launch site was a little ways north closer to the 14 freeway. There is in fact a cement factory there so I assume that is where they mean.

The other thing that makes these silos not used by Nike is that the Nike - Ajax (and Herculese for that matter) were not kept in vertical silos. They were kept in underground magazines horizontally, raised to the surface on an elevator and then rolled to an erector that stood them up for launch. Here is an examples. One two. It seems that there is no variation to this. All nike sites were arranged this way. There was one elevator per magazine and usually 4 launch erectors connected by a rail system.

So what I am dying to know is what the heck are the silos I saw?
It says in that text that the admin area was used until the 70s. Maybe they put in some other missiles in the that time after the Nikes were gone?
 
#690 ·
In my much younger days I lived in Chatsworth to the west of that area. There were actually several Nike-Ajax sites along the ridge lines in that area. We kids used to ride our bikes up to the fence line at a site north of Devonshire and Mason and get chased off by the USAF security people.

There were actually at least two test firings that I saw when I was about 9 years old from a couple of those sites in the mid-60's, it was quite a big deal at the time. Now they microwave, cellular etc antenna sites
 
#683 ·
This was my first time wheelin. The 3 of us came down to air back up. Our friend in the mj didn't air up, he was going to do it at home with his compressor so we said bye and he left. My buddy and I are using my little air compressor to air up and this total meth head rolls up in his lifted 4runner (stupid I.F.S) and he wont shut the hell up. He's like balding, has the crack stash, real freaky dude and he wont shut the hell up about the trails and these stupid stories. Finally we break away from this weirdo and get outta there.
 
#694 ·
a lady, her 2 year old daughter and their 3 dogs stuck in a 2wd tacoma. i didnt have my strap with me to pull em out since it was right by my house and pretty much just a shortcut to a friends house and doesnt even need 4wd. well i got out and was going to help her and me and a buddy went to give her a push on her tailgate and the German Shepard lunged and bit me in the neck
 
#699 ·
yeah? How about a KIA going thru The Squeeze and down Heart Attack Hill in the Anza-Borrego desert?
Um isn't that a Tracker.
 
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