USA Road Trip 2018 – Part 1 – Philadelphia to Chicago

Highlights From This Trip

• 8 Days
• 21 Locations Explored
• >1000 miles driven
• 6 States Visited

This road trip blog is split into two parts; this part covers the first half of the trip, covering our journey from Philidelphia to Chicago. See photos from the second part of our East Coast road trip here:

Read Part 2

I can’t recall when we first discussed exploring the East Coast USA, but it has been something we have pondered for at least a year. Always with a lamented sigh that we will see these glorious relics for ourselves, one day. In the late spring of 2018 this long-awaited trip finally happened. After several weeks of research and collaboration with some wonderful American (and Canadian!) explorers, dates were set and flights were booked. We travelled over 4000 miles in just over two weeks, photographing around 60 locations spread across 10 states. This was surely the most ambitious route plan yet, and we both psyched to hit the road as soon as we landed. There were many unforgettable moments and several adrenaline-fueled close-calls.

This road trip blog is split into two parts; this first part covers the first half of the trip, covering our adventures between Philadelphia and Chicago. We also spent several days exploring Pittsburgh and Cleveland during the first week. After Chicago, we headed north to Detroit, before looping back round to the east through New England (Massachusetts/Rhode Island/Connecticut) and finally returning to New York.

We landed in New York in the early evening and drove through the night to a motel just outside Philly. We hit the ground running with a few churches, as well as a visit to East State Penitentiary. We also explored several State hospitals, complete with obligatory dark corridors. Their walls adorned with crumbling, peeling paint. One hospital had a beautifully decaying auditorium, which we visited during a stormy morning after a rather wet walk through the woods.

We explored a wide array of abandoned locations; empty prisons, a trolley car graveyard, hundreds of multi-coloured VW Beetles in the woods, an American Football stadium, a boxing club, a vegetation-covered theme park, a moody crumbling theatre, a musty college library and an African-American funeral director. This provided some welcome relief from the numerous churches which are by far the most abundant derelict buildings on the East Coast of America. We explored many churches ranging from pristine and nearly untouched by decay or vandalism, to collapsed and stripped-out husks.

It was great to meet new photographers and friends on our travels, and to enjoy a few drinks and meals in local eateries before/after a day exploring. I had my first real pretzel in a bar in Philidelphia, enjoyed a delicious blueberry sour beer in a Cleveland punk bar and sampled the curiously-named “grits” in a Chicago breakfast diner.