Over the weekend Mrs. Ulcer and I decided to take a drive. While she did whatever black magic women do in the bathroom I made my preparations. I packed all of my Urbex gear, checked my camera, grabbed water and made sure everything was properly charged. While putting the top down on the roadster the following words were uttered, "This isn't an Urbex expedition. We're going for a drive and not exploring."
With my dreams dashed I told her that I had no intention of exploring I just wanted a day with the two of us enjoying the open road...
With no destination in mind, I let her pick the exits and the locations we visited. All in all a nice journey, especially since I found about a half dozen sites to follow up on! That's what today was about!
The first location was an old motel that had 16 rooms. While getting some exterior shots I was approached by a guy in the parking lot of a neighboring seedy motel. "Great. I'm either going to get mugged or panhandled..." Turns out the rather taciturn individual knew the owner and agreed to get in touch with him for me. About 10 minutes later a pickup from Southern Union pulls up while I'm shooting the exterior. A middle aged black guy with long hair emerges and doesn't say a word. I approach him and ask if he's the owner. "Yep" is the reply. I then explain what I was doing, complimenting him on the great place he had and asked if I could go inside one of the rooms to shoot (as they all looked the same I figured one would do). "Nope", came the reply. I then asked him several questions about the place and the only information I got was that it was built sometime in the 1950's. He said I could shoot the exterior but only if I didn't publish where the location is.
Honestly, as explores go this one wasn't very exciting, except for the amazing lichens and air plants growing in abundance on the hand railings! I have never seen anything like this before in such quantities. The colors and textures were just begging to be shot:
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When I had finished with the motel, I noticed that the owner had taken up a position across the street and had been watching me the entire time. As I left, he followed me (at a distance but it's a small town so its kinda hard to miss) and turned off as I came to my next location - a Masonic Lodge.
Like most of these places this one was buttoned up tight (I probably could have kicked down the door...) and was on the intersection of two major highways so again all I got was exterior shots...
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After this rather uneventful shoot it was off to a gigantic tree we had noticed on our day trip. As it turns out it's actually the 2nd largest oak in Texas! The trunk is HUGE and the owners have actually installed large metal posts to help hold the branches upright. Not really Urbex but I figured I would share nonetheless.
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After finishing up my druidic rituals with the mistletoe, I headed south to an old church I had seen on the side of the road. Expectations were high on this one as I love old churches, it was in the middle of nowhere and in spite of the front door being bashed in, I figured it's remoteness was probably its salvation. Sadly I was wrong...
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Finally it was off to an old rice mill that I had my eye on for a while from Google Earth. These places are usually not very interesting and other than some really great graffiti, this one was the same.
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Overall not a terribly exciting explore but for a Wednesday in the country not too terribly bad. Thanks for looking and if you're interested, there are many more photos not modified by the uploader on my Flickr here:
https://www.flickr.../72157676876380853 
