This was a surprise gold mine. First of all, it took me a surprisingly long time to find this place. I passed this place for three years, regularly, before I found it. I am downright ashamed it took me so long to realize it was there. (It was mid-winter, when all the trees were gone, that I just spotted a glimpse of the barn through the trees.)

And I thought "oh goody, another barn. I've never explored a barn before. And a collapsed one at that! I bet there's nothing there for me." But I went anyway, and I'm very glad I did, because it turns out that barn was hiding another barn, and a garage, and a trailer.

And a house, but the house was in the middle of renovations and locked, so no house for me.



Once I hopped the fence (which I found out was needless twice: if I'd gone just ten feet to the left, it was broken, and if I'd turned the corner, turned out I could have driven onto the property) and walked about twenty feet, this was my view. Ah, Rural Exploration. Barns and Silos.

Still wasn't expecting much of this place, at this point. Figured I'd be out in ten minutes. I had my sister waiting in the car, and had told her as much. (She was kinda glad my second exploration planned for the day was locked up tight. I can only bribe her with so much food.)



Tires are a pretty normal sight at these explorations, to be honest. Just random tires, sitting around. Stacked up against something, lying in piles. Okay.



I don't even know.



This is also pretty common at the "barn complex" explorations, as I like to call them. (Just a group of farm buildings.) Farm equipment just gets left out to rot. One of my favorite explorations isn't even a building. It's just a collection of farm equipment sitting at the edge of of a field, rotting next to a tiny shed.



I really should have given this building more credit. It's already become more interesting than I expected. I expected nothing of it, when I saw it from the road. Just a pile of wood, basically. And there's stuff in it.



What. What? What. What the actual fuck. How did a car get there?! How? You can see from the photo above, this car definitely was on the second floor of this building. My brain can't parse this.

I might as well fold it in and call it done, right?

Well, this building was hiding more. (None with cars hanging from the ceiling, but...)



The second building. I'm not entirely sure what either of these buildings were for, to be honest. Like, the first building might have been some sort of storage or living space, from what was inside. This one...





There's a bed here. There was a dresser-like object off to the side, but there was also a room full of buckets, just clearly a storage room of some kind, and there's another room that seems to be meant to hold animals, perhaps? (I know I do primarily rural exploration, but I'm ignorant.)

Next building.



Between this sign and the rock that was holding the door shut, I present the most effective security measures ever known to man.

Took me hours to get in.



There was nothing much inside there. These cars, the lawnmower, a canoe. Stuff you'd find in a lakeside garage.

Boring! Next building. This is actually an RV. I tried the door, climbed right in.







I think this looks basically what a normal RV would look like if it had been abandoned for a long time. Haven't been in a lot of not-abandoned RVs. Most normal thing about this trip so far (except for the garage, but even then, that wasn't too normal.)



Oh yeah, except for me finding the car's radio over in the back. That was odd.



Finally, on my way out, I found some overgrown garden/well/statue stuff, and instead of falling in or twisting my leg or something, I took a picture.

This definitely counts as one of my more bizarre explorations. (The weirdest is tied between the metal shop/trailer and the Mendon house that might have belonged to an ancestor of mine. I mean... what are the chances?)

Maybe the owner used a crane to lift the car into the building during construction? Other than that, I don't know how else it would get up there, much less why someone would go through the trouble to put it there.

The statue garden was pretty interesting, and so were the rest of the pictures. Your commentary made them even better. And the family connection? That's pretty cool. Great work.

I would assume that before the barn collapsed there was a door for the cars to drive in. That or they built the building around the cars. Nice find!

Jason, I mean that the car was clearly on the second floor. A friend of mine suggested the car was assembled on the second floor. So I guess there are a few possible ways a car got up there, but that just leads to why put a random van up there. It doesn't look like any recognizable classic car; a car you'd want to put on display.

Posted by CooperArt ...why put a random van up there. It doesn't look like any recognizable classic car; a car you'd want to put on display.

Maybe the farmer was trolling people before it was cool? Or maybe it just had sentimental value? I guess there are some questions we'll never be able to truly answer.

No! That white car is a Saab! I'm a Saab fanatic and had one for years. The poor thing...

In other news, I have no idea how a car got on the second floor. Thats ridiculous.

Posted by CooperArt Jason, I mean that the car was clearly on the second floor. A friend of mine suggested the car was assembled on the second floor. So I guess there are a few possible ways a car got up there, but that just leads to why put a random van up there. It doesn't look like any recognizable classic car; a car you'd want to put on display.

My mistake, I thought it was on the ground floor. Now I'm stumped and very curious.

There very well could've been a wooden ramp built from the outside to the second floor - which has long collapsed and is no longer recognizable. I've seen a few barns with such ramps before. Another method instead of wood, could've been land (dirt), long removed. That would be my hypothesis.

Posted by puddlejumper12 No! That white car is a Saab! I'm a Saab fanatic and had one for years. The poor thing...

Well, if we were those kind of people, I'd tell you I knew where to find one... But we're not.

Though in a future write-up I'll talk about how hard I had to talk myself out of not raiding one house. (They had tools, I had a bunch of my tools stolen. Re-building your toolset is expensive.) I managed to walk away without scrapping anything. I stood in front of the gigantic toolbox for about ten minutes debating on it, then walked away with nothing.

It's the only time I've ever considered taking anything. I'm blaming it on the loss of my tools in the first place and on the fact that one of my meds has lowered my inhibitions a lot, so stuff I normally wouldn't do, I am now more likely to do.

Posted by relik There very well could've been a wooden ramp built from the outside to the second floor - which has long collapsed and is no longer recognizable. I've seen a few barns with such ramps before. Another method instead of wood, could've been land (dirt), long removed. That would be my hypothesis.

Yeeeeeeah that tends to be the case. Not sure why farmers want ramps up there, but usually it's because there's a lot of hoppers to feed the animals on the bottom tier, this is just easier than manually shoveling in the hay and feed and what have you. Look up any photo of a two tier barn and i can almost guarantee that one side has a ramp.

I see two Saab 900s in that photo.