When a walk in the park becomes a visit to a Soviet missile silo!

SO lets have a picnic say I......Tom is finally going to have an afternoon off so I pack up some chicken sandwiches and some of the excellent cheeses and sausages we have on hand. The plan is to head out to Pilatelai area. Pictures of the some of the general region are shown on my entry about the trip to the yacht club with Cheryl. Tom had driven through the area before I had arrived but had never had the time to really explore.
So off we go.

We arrived in Pilatelai, which is really just the town in the middle of this big regional park area.


As I had only explored it the one other time, all I knew to do was to head down to the yacht club. Tom was less than thrilled with this as it quickly became very apparent that the place was clogged with all the Lithuanians who had escaped their lakeless towns and cities. The one curiosity at the yacht club though was the scuba rental shop. We watched some of the diving and it didn't look all that safe with divers surfacing right in the line of row boats coming in.

We chose to try an alternate way into the area and found a parking lot on the hill that was at the nature walk trail head. Taking the path, we saw the usual sights...lots of pretty wild flowers, berries and mushrooms, a variety of deciduous and coniferous trees, and the lake shore where Tom hoped to find a spot from which he could fly fish.












Unfortunately we could not really find a suitable place for the latter that would not have entailed wading out quite a ways from the shoreline and he had not brought any suitable footwear for this.
We did find this interesting carved fellow along the route....looks a bit like a troll atop an elephant!


Tom was intrigued with the anthills that they had surrounded with fencing throughout the park in order to 'preserve'. We are not sure why they were being protected in this manner.

Finishing the loop on which we did not meet many people ( they were all down at the beach) we sat in the ruins of some old fortification overlooking the lakes and had our picnic lunch.















Where to next? Well lets go explore further up the road. We had read about a couple of old interesting churches in villages near by. Unfortunately , they were closed even though it was a Sunday. I guess you have to be on time for mass, and we certainly weren't.











Tom had heard about a military exhibition that was supposedly near by. We found the cut off and followed it down a dirt road until we came to signs that pointed to the exhibit. This was a former USSR MISSILE SILO BASE.....unused now of course, except to serve as a reminder to the Lithuanians about their not so distant past.
I found this link that explains the exhibition and former site better than anything I could write,
http://www.liw.lt/archive_vid.php?shid=1141920046&id=1141919774

I can say though that it was very eerie experience, one that not many people can say they have had. The pictures don't really tell the whole story so please look at the link above as well.

The tour itself was in Lithuanian, but even without understanding what was being explained, we still could feel the impact this had on the group and got some of the general gist.

We started the tour on the outside and noted the 4 rusting domes sticking up from the ground which had housed the missiles. We then proceeded to go inside the bunker which led to soldiers quarters, training rooms and the actual silos.








Note the diagram identifying various military aircraft : bottom left is Canada.









This tour would not happen in North America in this format. If you followed the link I provided about the site, he mentions that the similar American facility has recently been purchased with the intention of making it a tourist attraction as well. What will be different I am sure, is the WAY in which it is presented. On this tour we went roaming around very poorly lit tunnels and climbed up into the silo on our hands and knees. Getting out was of the silo was very difficult for some of the women and even for the older men. No one thought twice about it though and seemed to accept that this was all part of the tour and you took it at your own risk. In the USA, liability issues would ensure that the no one could be injured. By default, this would mean altering the site and this would strip away some of the intensity and realism.


















Once finished with the exhibit, we went on another hike which basically was the perimeter of the base. We came across what appeared to be a former bunker.








So this day had turned out to be a great walk out in the Lithuanian countryside. Just to cap it off, so to speak, here is a nice photo Tom took of a 'natural' hair ornament. IKI!!