Tiny Sputniks

J is amazing and is totally up for doing whatever I want to do. Back in April 2019 we decided to make a day of things I wanted to do. We started with looking for beach glass on Lake Erie. There's a really good spot to find it, and the beginning of spring is always a great time to go because it's after winter where its washed ashore without having been picked through yet. We took his sister along with us and had much success finding pieces of beach glass along the lake. I have said it before and I will say it again, Blogger does a great job of making photos look terrible, so sorry for the awful quality.

After looking for beach glass we headed over to the Warner Swasey Observatory. I first visited the observatory back in 2015, right before I moved to Russia. However, at the time, it was just my friend and me. We were too afraid to go in by ourselves because it is abandoned and it didn't look like it had any easy escape routes once you went through the boarded up door. This time I was more comfortable with J and his sister. There were also a lot more people checking it out which made me feel safer.

The inside was so cool and not at all what I was expecting. It exceeded my expectations. It was much larger than it looks from the outside and actually it was very bright. Only two rooms were dark: the auditorium and the entry way. It's clearly seen visitors over the years because it is coated in graffiti. There were also rooms that looked like they were going to be remodeled at one point but I don't know what happened. It would be a really cool place it it was fixed up.

Would you visit the observatory?

Way back in 2019 (pre-Covid life - remember that?), we took a day trip to Mansfield Reformatory. I had always wanted to go there, and when my friend Mandi said that we should plan a day trip I jumped at the chance. At the time I had started working a second job at Starbucks. It was a Sunday, and to that point I had never worked a Sunday. However, when the schedule came out, wouldn't you know that I was scheduled to work. Thankfully, my friend was able to cover the second part of my shift. While we didn't get to leave earlier, we still made it to Mansfield before it closed.

The Ohio State Reformatory (OSR) is about an hour and some minutes from Cleveland. It's not a far drive, and definitely worth it for a day trip. Before it was an actual prison, the OSR's land was originally a training camp for Civil War soldiers. After Mansfield was chosen to be the site of a new penitentiary in 1867, construction of the building began in 1886. Because of funding problems, it wasn't completed until 1910. Despite the long time for completion, the prison opened its doors to its first inmates in 1896. It remained a prison until December 1990 when the federal government ordered its closure due to overcrowding and inhumane conditions.

Since its closure, the OSR has been the site of a number of films, most notably Shawshank Redemption. Fun fact, I didn't even see Shawshank Redemption until after we had visited the site. One of my favorite parts of visiting were all the Russian signs and decor from the movie Air Force One. It actually felt like I could have been in a Russian prison with all the peeling paint.

Despite being such a creepy place, I enjoyed visiting. It felt abandoned without the dangers of actually being abandoned. I really liked walking around the cells because of the peeling paint and overall look. It's hard to imagine being there day after day. The prison also reminded me of Ellis Island, which is saying a lot about Ellis Island I guess. The most harrowing part was the isolation wing. It was dark and eerie. I tried to take photos but they didn't come out to well because of the lighting and the cramped spaces.

I would 100% recommend visiting the Ohio State Reformatory. Make sure you give yourselves several hours to walk through, and do so on a full stomach and after ingesting some caffeine. Luckily, going to visit after a shift at Starbucks gave me the energy yo walk through the museum.