There are many words and pictures here about a trip I took to Chernobyl and Pripyat over four days in early April, 2013. These words exist simply to tell a story - my story of traveling to these places. They are a chronological narrative, mostly to help me remember the trip and to document this unique place at the time of my visit.

My goal in sharing here is to transport you to the places that I went to, to give you a sense of what it is that I saw, through the lens of my camera and the words I wrote immediately after.

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I wasn't sure what to expect making a trip to Chernobyl. For most people, the site of history's greatest nuclear disaster is one of the last places on earth they'd visit, but for another subset of crazy folks such as myself it's near the top of a long list of sites to visit to explore and photograph.

Just getting to Kiev isn't easy - no carrier flies direct from Denver or any other US city. We hopped around the world, stopping first in Montreal where we almost missed our connecting flight to Frankfurt, and so on to Kiev from there. In Kiev, we were greeted by the best Eastern Europe has to offer. As with most former Soviet nations it is characterized by bleak architecture and a relatively poor economy, but all we cared about was a hot shower and a real meal after 23 hours of travel.

We spent a day getting adjusted to the new time zone, and didn't venture far from the hotel. We needed some time to breathe before our adventure, and besides, none of us read or speak Ukrainian which made it very difficult to navigate the city with a travel hangover.