Fire on Clausland Mountain near tunnels of Tweed

A fire on Clausland Mountain is finally under control after more then 24 hours. Several homes were threatened, but local firefighters were able to prevent any damage to them. The mountain is more than 300 acres of woodlands with hiking trails thru out. The mountain is home to the Bluefields Rifle range, more commonly known as the tunnels of tweed

Picatinny Arsenal hunts for live shells buried on neighboring property

Neighboring properties to be searched. It’s only been 84 years…., I mean, no time like the present right?

South Plainfield Vietnam Memorial

 

This is South Plainfield Memorial Park, home to momuments dedicated to the Civil War, Vietnam War, SP police, SP Rescue Squad, and a Veterans Momument, along with various flags and a town clock. The park cost over 100,000 and was funded thru donations. The standout feature of the park is the AH-1 Cobra Assault Helicopter.  It flew in Vietnam from 1970-1973 before returning home and being used at various bases stateside. I was en route to a friend’s wedding in S Plainfield when I spotted the helicopter and had to stop and check it out. 

#voiceofthemostinterestingmanintheworld: I don’t normally pose for pictures with military vehicles, but when i do I’m wearing a suit.

See what the inside of Coast Guard lighthouse look like

Back in 2004 I asked politely, and was granted, permission to tag along with the Coast Guard on their spring maitenance tour of Delaware Bay lighthouses. It was for a project I was working on and they were happy to oblige. We started out at the Wildwood Coast Guard base and we drove up to a dock near Salem where we put into the water. it was a relatively small boat and 5 Coast Guard members and myself boarded the boat and headed out for several lighthouses. For safety reasons we all wore these gigantic orange life suits. not life jackets, life SUITS. reminded me of those sumos suits you could wear and wrestle in at the state fair a few years back. The thing is huge but it would save my life if I fell overboard. Some of the lighthouses were on rocky shoals with docks, but some were basically giant tubes built into shoals so you had to climb from the bow of the boat straight up a ladder on the side of the wall of the structure. All the pictures are on flicker. here’s a handful below

Two amazing military finds

Find #1: These guys snuck aboard some abandoned naval vessels out SF.  And here I thought I was badass sneaking into Greystone. My only complaint is: you sneak aboard an abandoned Destroyer and you only post a dozen pictures?

Find #2: An abandoned military base (Vozdvizhenka Air Base apparently). I can’t be sure because the LjJ page is written in Cyrillic which I don’t speak or read. If anyone can tell me what it says I’d be appreciative.

Welcome IO9 and NY Scout readers!

I knew when i got up this morning that NY Scout had visited the jet in the woods because my site notifies me whenever someone else links to me. He was quite gracious enough to comment about my site a few times in his post (which I appreciate, as opposed to him just saying this is cool!). When I came home form work i went to IO9 and saw they had linked to Scout’s page and it seems we’re both getting a lot of traffic as a result. Today marks the best day I’ve ever had in terms of hits. I average about 10-15,000 page hits a month, or about the same as the Cheetos website. I think that’s pretty cool since I this is an obscure hobby which I do not promote outside of the community, I do not advertise for, nor do I advertise on. Today I got almost 3,000 hits and the day isn’t over. To make it easier, here’s a link to the most relevant pages about the jet in the woods since that’s what most people want to see today.

This is the main original post, notable for the heated debate over what kind of plane it was. A fan and fellow geocacher named Ian helped ID the plane after finding markings under the wing. This settled the debate.. I am friends with local Bergen Record reporter Bill Ervolino and he wanted a weird neat local story, so I took him to the jet which he wrote an article about. I later discovered that someone had cut a piece of the jet out presumably for scrap metal.

My favorite post is this one Ian Rothesberger, a conestant on Survivor was interested in creating a tv show about urban exploration and need some subject material for the pilot episode. He had heard about the jet but did not know its location, so I showed him. He eventually interviewed Ian and myself (the other Ian, the one who ID’d the plane) for the pilot episode. They are still shopping it around to the networks as far as I know. It was a fun, muddy day. If anyone has questions, feel free to ask, but don’t ask me for directions. I’m loathe to give them and in this case I flat out will refuse. After seeing how someone carving a piece out of the jet I refuse to take any more chances, so no directions. Any such requests will not even merit a response from me.

The Belle Meade Depot

The GSA-Belle Mead Depot was located in Hillsborough and had several purposes thru its history. It was primarily a warehouse and there were numerous railroad lines running into the facility. During WWII, the facility was used as sort of 20th century Guantanamo, housing Italian POW’s. After the Vietnam war, the property was then turned over to the GSA from the Army until it was closed in 1991. In 2009 the Belle Meade Depot property was transfered over to the Somerset County Improvement Authority. Bought for $15M, the 369 acre property will be jointly owned by the county and the town of Hillsborough. it is hoped that after any contimination is removed (which cost another $20M) the property will become ball fields and recreational areas.

I visited there in 2007 with the intent to scale the most notable thing on the property: a giant water tower. I went there with several friends and we scouted the property which was very close to some ball fields. After scouting out a handful of remaining buildings that were in serious disrepair, we headed for the tower. I have to say that this was not a smart move. We didn’t know the structural stability of the tower, or more importantly the ladder. Like stupid spider monkeys we one by one climbed up and were treated to an amazing 360 degree view of the area. At the time there was a geocache up on the top, easily one of the riskiest geocache finds ever. Still, this isn’t the stupidist or riskiest thing I’ve ever done in my explorations. All the pictures are up on flickr

Someone has cut a hole in the fuselage of the jet in the woods

I have covered the jet in the woods several times here on my blog. It generated quite a debate over what kind of plane it was until a local geocacher located the model # on the wing. I visit periodically and the last time was about a year ago when I went showed it to Bergen Record Columnist Bill Ervolino I visited the jet in the woods today and was shocked when I realized that someone had cut a piece of the fuselage out with a sawzall. This was the jet 5 years ago.

Here it is today.

I brought a friend with me and he commented that the jet might not be there given the rise in value of scrap metal. He told me the airplane was made from aluminum and that it wouldn’t be too hard to cut off pieces of it. I laughed at the idea commenting “even the military felt it was too much of a pain in the ass to remove it from these woods. How would anyone possibly do that now?” I guess if you have a sawzall you can cut it down to size and then it’s easy to remove….

Picatinny Arsenal develops Mad Max style vehicles for combat

They’re just prototypes, but still…

interesting info on the jet in the woods

I recently visited a resident who lives about 300 yards south of the jet in the woods. I had a long talk with him about the area and the jet crash. His home is interesting, the driveway is paved with blocks taken from the West Side Highway in NY, given away for 25 cents a piece when they paved it with concrete…

The woods where the jet crashed are deceptive. The crash site is right on the rim of a lake, which is now covered over with layers of branches, tree limbs, leaves dirt and other plant life. they’ve woven themselves into a permeable layer over water in some cases 40 feet deep. Called a quake bog, if you jump up and down you can feel the ground bounce like trampoline. He took a stick about 2 feet long, scratched a bit of surface dirt off, then shoved it into the ground with the ease of a knife thru butter. If the jet had crashed another 100 feet, it would’ve pierced this top layer of plantlife and sunk to the bottom, like crashing thru a frozen lake.

Looks pretty solid, eh?

While there he pointed out bear tracks and the fact that a mama bear, about 700 lbs worth, had slept right about 100 feet from his house…

Bear tracks

Why all this talk about the jet in the woods? Can’t say right yet…