Day trip to My Bloody Valentine town

 Day trip to My Bloody Valentine town

Being snowed in this weekend means I have lots of spare time to write more posts dealing with the wonderful month of February. Earlier this week I've posted about some Valentine's Day items that I've collected, along with expressing how much I love the 1981 slasher My Bloody Valentine and it's 2009 remake.

Here I decided to post about a little day trip I took with my friend Melissa back in the early winter of 2011. While going to school to PA there wasn't exactly tons to do. The town where our school was seriously was half deserted like a ghost town with empty factories and some pretty sketchy areas. (the final showdown scene at the factory in RoboCop was filmed there...so try to imagine where I was living.) Western Pennsylvania is like living on a different planet. Since Pittsburgh was about forty minutes away, along with everything else there was always the main question of what to do whenever one got bored. While my stay at school there were lots of driving, walking, drinking games, and watching tons of movies. Lucky for me my friend  Melissa was always the one who wanted to get out of our apartments and explore, avoiding cabin fever whenever possible. 

When I learned one of my instructors worked on the 2009 remake of My Bloody Valentine my interest was caught even though he said the town where they filmed it was very small and there was seriously nothing to do there. Being the movie nerd I am, I told Melissa about this and we decided to take the ride over there to see if we recognized any of the locations.

I can't exactly remember how far away the town was. Maybe an hour away? It was filmed mostly in a small town called  Kittanning. The instant we began driving there I was instantly charmed by it. Yeah it was a small town, but something about it seemed welcoming, clean, and friendly. Completely unlike the town our school was in.The Mothman Prophecies was another movie that was filmed there and the bridge leading to the town is very recognizable due to the key ending scene.

We first stopped at the market where the lead character Sarah works in. The interior of this location was used several times in the movie along with a pretty frightening chase scene. Since we visited in late January we found it fitting that there were Valentine's Day decorations everywhere. I spoke to one of the check-out ladies who told me they shut down for a few days for the movie to film and that she along with the other girls got to meet the whole cast. While there I bought myself a little package of candy hearts which I have still yet to open.

We walked even around to the back alley of the store and up and down the streets for a little bit before parking and walking the length of the bridge that's seen in the movie. Even though we were freezing our asses off, I had the time of my life. Our last stop was vaguely around the farmland where they filmed the mine scenes at the beginning and end of the movie. Since it was off season the mine itself was closed (which I guess does tours during the spring and summer.) The area was deserted and pretty snowed in. Not wanting to trespass on private property we walked a bit before snapping a few photos and leaving. Of course the walk was in about a foot of snow and I nearly died when Melissa fell face first into the snow.

There I happened to come across a "broken" sign showing the hours for the mine. Like I said before and I'll say again, since it was so old and weather beaten, I'm sure it wasn't missed.

So there you have it. To many a lame day trip, to a huge Bloody Valentine fan like myself, an awesome way to spend the afternoon!