I have a request for satellite map providers; one I doubt will ever be fulfilled—could you please, please, please update the satellite images daily? It will save me a lot in gas and hotel costs and of course help the environment out immensely because I won’t be on the road. Our Long Island trip turned into a comedy of errors, one where I found myself constantly repeating in an exasperated tone, “but it’s on the map.” So rather than returning home elated with three or four new galleries to add I came home with one—very disappointing.

Don’t get me wrong I’m thrilled to have conquered Kings Park. And conquered, I believe, is the appropriate word here. The place is massive, humongous, really, really, really, super-big (I think you get the gist, it’s quite large) and tough to gain access to. But being the tenacious middle-aged explorers we are, and having been foiled twice already by non-existent, inaccessible places, we weren’t going to be defeated for a third time (well I wasn’t anyway, my exploring partner was, however, a little apprehensive, but if you’re a regular reader you’ll know that’s nothing new). And we weren’t. I had bruises appearing in places I didn’t know you could have bruises for days afterwards. I know I won’t forget those spiky window things in a hurry. Ouch!

The comedy of errors continued on Sunday with our next stop being smack in the middle of a golf course (what’s left of it anyway) and boarded up so well that even had we have found our way in we would have been in total darkness. So we officially had one place out of four and not a lot of options to increase that number.

All was not lost though, we spent Sunday in NYC and I had a great time just being a tourist and taking touristy photos of nothing in particular in my most favorite city in the world. I should do it more often. It makes a healthy change from dark, damp, mouldy, asbestos ridden abandonments. But alas it doesn’t really present the same challenge and I do love a challenge.

Kings Park did teach me something other than the odd places you can get bruises — how animals in a zoo feel, or rather how they feel being stared at through a wire fence and talked about as though deaf. More about that next time…

Building 93, Kings Park Psychiatric Center, Long Island, NY