On The Hunt For Abandoned Vehicles

What's better than spending a day hiking in the woods? Spending a day hiking in the woods where there's a payoff at the end, which for us lately has been some pretty cool abandoned vehicles.

I'll start with our adventure last fall to the Mill Pond Conservation in Burlington Massachusetts, where the biggest challenge of the day was figuring out where to park. We didn't know much about the place other than two things - it was a conservation area, and there was an abandoned truck somewhere in those woods. We weren't even sure if the area had walking trails though, and after circling the surrounding neighborhoods a few times - to the point we were getting longer than casual looks from some residents - we weren't even sure there was an entrance. Houses seemed to border the conservation's entire 140 acres.

But fortunately I make a habit out of "yupping" my wife, because long after she'd told me to give up searching I found a small parking area at the end of Makechnie Road, where we entered the woods. And after an enjoyable and not too long hike we found the prize, this rusted heap that barely had the words "Burlington" something or other written on the door.

Next we'll bring you to College Woods here in Durham New Hampshire, another easy and enjoyable hike we made this winter. That is, enjoyable until I took us a half mile off-trail and into snow and slush and across a small stream that our hiking shoes were totally unprepared for. After several white lies where I told Tina to keep moving because our destination was "just over the next hill", we finally did come over the next hill and find what I was looking for, this beast that some company dumped long enough ago for trees to have grown around it.

While driving through Berwick Maine one afternoon we pulled over to check directions and noticed a dead-end dirt road disappearing into the woods. Abiding by our family rule of never letting a dead-end dirt road go unexplored (a family rule I created at that very moment), down it we went. Although in itself the road was unremarkable I spotted something through the trees, and to the synchronized eye-rolling of my two youngest children had Tina pull over. There I crept through the woods and snapped pictures of this stripped down old relic.

This next spot brings us back to Massachusetts, and on a hunt through a former farm turned conservation area. The cars we found in these woods were a real windfall - three old Saabs the likes of which I've never seen on the roads of New England.

One being this mini station wagon. I've never seen Tina look large next to any vehicle other than her Big Wheel.

Our final abandoned vehicle I'm adding for two reasons. First, it's a model I'd never heard of before and thought it had a cool name, a Plymouth Scamp. Second, this car is a piece of a much bigger puzzle, the disappearance of Sorensen Transportation and 39 of their tractor trailers that were abandoned in the woods of New England many years ago. This caused quite an Internet buzz when pieces of the story came out last year. Their location was kept secret, but Barry and I found clues to their whereabouts and took this picture while on the hunt to find these trucks for ourselves.

Stay tuned!