Life of a Seasonal Nomad- Aran's Year In Review - Thread

It's been a couple of years since I made one of these, but if there's any year worth making one for it's this one. I left Wisconsin last winter to wander the country as a seasonal worker so that I could travel and explore far and wide. 32,000 miles, 106 locations, 10 states, 5 urbex meetups, and 1 year later, here we are. I present to you, my Year In Review.

I started off the year with a visit to the Twin Cities. If you know what happens in MSP during January, you know. I spent a week exploring as many places as I could while meeting with old and new friends alike, and as always it was the highlight of my year.

1.) Some old industrial tunnels under the city. I ended up falling in the water and flooding my drain boots, as unfortunately seems to be tradition for me.

2.) I didn't just stick to the underground in MSP- I did some rooftopping too.

3.) More tunnels, with a massive pipe running through them to carry water.

4.) Naturally, I had to explore at least one abandoned building as well- even if I mostly stuck to the underground this visit.

5.) Gotta love a good brick storm drain. A local explorer gave me and several others quite the scare down here- we thought he was a city worker at first, and made a beeline for the exit before realizing our error. I was in such a hurry I even spilled my beer.

6.) Sand caves, an MSP classic!

7.) Another classic MSP drain. I got completely separated from the group and ended up wandering the wrong way, all the way down to the outfall before doubling back and finding them. Good thing I found them before my phone died, because getting back out of the manhole was a two person kind of thing.

8.) We were hanging out in this cave when some dick stole our entire backpack full of beer. If you're reading this, you know who you are. I hope your socks are always wet, asshole.

9.) Some urbex friends and I decided to check out more sand caves. I don’t have any good photos from this one from that visit, so here’s one I never posted from an MSP explorer’s birthday party in that same cave I attended six months prior.

10.) After the cave in the previous post, we went to check out a heavily decorated storm drain that used to be a party spot. We discovered that the ladder down the manhole was completely covered in ice, so I climbed down as far as I could before jumping the rest of the way. Then I used a railroad spike to chip the ladder rungs free of the ice from below so the rest of the group could climb down, and also so I could climb back up afterwards.

11.) I actually made two visits to this drain in two days. It had some cool ice formations inside. Some kids stole the manhole cover, so it was really cold inside.

12.) Naturally, I had to end my visit by attending an incredible cave party. I don’t remember as much about this as I should, but what I do remember was an incredible time.

With my visit to MSP coming to an end, the time came for me to head back west. I decided to take the southern route across the Dakotas, and found a couple spots along the highway.

13.) Sometimes you just gotta stop at an abandoned farmstead, if only to stretch your legs.

14.) An agricultural ghost town on the prairie. Truth be told I’ve never found the buildings in these types of towns super interesting since it’s pretty much always a few old empty houses and a grain silo or two, but the derelict cars always make for good pictures.

After a few days I finally made it back to Montana, where I threw myself into exploring as much as I could. Montana is pretty sparsely populated and everything worth exploring is pretty far apart, but I still managed to visit a fair number of spots with many long hours on lonely highways. Some of you may have already seen this thread I made, though it certainly wasn’t all I explored out there.

15.) A derelict bar at a lonely crossroads. The fading light of day and softly falling snow really set the mood.

16.) Here’s a mining ghost town deep in the mountains of Montana. Getting there was a white-knuckled adventure, but I already made a thread telling the story so I’ll just leave a link and move on.

17.) The next place I set my sights on was a partially abandoned asylum that took me the better part of a month to get inside. Like the previous entry, I already did a full historic write up so I’ll just leave a link to it and move on.

18.) After talking my way out of a trespassing charge at the asylum, I decided to wash my hands of it and move on to mine infrastructure. Climbing headframes is fun!

19.) I actually got into the first level of the mine below this headframe. It turned out just to be where the elevators unloaded and minecarts exited through a tunnel in the side of a nearby hill. Going any deeper would have required ropework, and considering that the mineshaft is nearly a mile deep, that wasn’t exactly feasible.

20.) I stumbled upon an abandoned oilfield on the eastern plains of Montana while in search of a totally different abandonment that didn’t pan out. It was mostly a large number of structures like this scattered across several square miles.

21.) This motel is sometimes used as a squat by trainhoppers along the High Line hotshot route, judging by the graffiti messages inside.

22.) Just a small drive in diner.

23.) One of several identical abandoned electrical substations scattered across Montana. They were built by the railroads in the days of electrical locomotives, and were abandoned when diesel locomotives became the standard.

24.) The schoolhouse of a small railroad ghost town. Despite rumors of gun toting landowners chasing down trespassers, I didn’t have any trouble here.

25.) Montana is absolutely littered in wooden grain elevators like this one. Usually there’s not much inside except for an obscene amount of pigeon crap.

With the snow in Montana beginning to melt, I decided to swing on over to Kansas City for another meetup. I arrived a few days early and got introduced to some awesome people who helped me put the “urban” back in urban exploration after spending so long in the mountainous backcountry.

26.) Judging by the amount of used needles in this bank vault, this was once some dude’s personal meth bunker.

27.) Some of the KC folks took me on a broad daylight rooftopping expedition. It’s not something I usually do, but I certainly didn’t mind it.

28.) A chill hangout spot in the heart of downtown.

29.) Exploring an abandoned mine from the bed of a pickup truck was a relatively new experience to me, but I definitely had a great time!

30.) Some fellow explorers and I had a tense moment where we found ourselves trapped on a fire escape while rooftopping, hoping the garbage truck driver below wouldn’t notice us. Fortunately, he didn’t.

31.) A Kansas City classic. Despite the constant risk of dome outs, we managed to avoid setting off a cave in as we wandered this enormous underground facility. I explored it a bit during my first visit to Kansas City back in 2019, but I hadn’t visited since then so it was nice to return and get better photos.

32.) Getting 57 explorers into an abandoned building all at once, in the middle of downtown for a party was not a feat I really expected to work- but work it did.

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33.) Circumstances I will not elaborate upon in a public platform mandate I don’t post this one. Sorry folks.

34.) Grain mills are a staple of any industrial urbex. A black SUV whipped around the corner just as we were exiting, so we ended this expedition with a frantic run through the underbrush to escape.

35.) A pristine church that was unfortunately destroyed by scrappers less than a month after my visit.

36.) More broad daylight rooftopping. I could get used to this.

37.) The big cave party to end the meetup. Unfortunately we were interrupted just when things were getting fun by a group of self proclaimed “bounty hunters” who called in a fake OD report to get the party busted by the cops. Then they dressed up as cops so they could blend in and use the confusion to rob explorers at gunpoint. It was a whole big thing for about a month afterwards.

Leaving the shadow of the KCPD behind me, I hitched a ride with a couple of Colorado explorers out to Denver to see some of the sights there. I only spent a few days with them, but what I saw absolutely blew me away.

38.) The members of the fledgling Bureau of Exploration tried to show me an art gallery they were setting up in the back of this drain, but unfortunately I didn’t get to see it. Despite the “0% chance of rain” predicted by the weather forecast, the water began to rapidly rise around us while we were inside. Fortunately we escaped before the floodwaters got too high.

39.) The Bureau of Exploration members and I traveled deep into the mountains, where we had to hike several miles each way through thigh-high snow. Despite the brutal hike, it was well worth it to see a mine filled with amazing ice formations and mine carts.

After my brief visit to Denver, I had to return to Montana to finish out my seasonal job. With the spring thaw well under way, previously impassable roads became passable and inaccessible locations were suddenly doable.

40.) Another one of those railroad substations, this one with far less graffiti.

41.) Locals once dreamed of restoring this historic theater. Two severe fires that absolutely gutted it sent those dreams up in smoke.

42.) Just another farmhouse on the prairie.

43.) A massive ghost town that was once a Cold War era US Air Force base. There was so much to explore here that I could easily spend days and not see everything. I wrote a full historic write up here if you’re interested in reading it.

With my seasonal position in Montana finished, I decided to head back east for a little while. Once I got back I immediately threw myself into planning and organizing an urbex meetup in Gary, Indiana. We called it “Wastepex” and it ended up turning into more of a South Side Chicago meetup, not that I’m complaining. With about a dozen explorers from MSP, Wisconsin, Chicago, Kansas City, and Texas, we had a pretty good turnout and explored some amazing spots.

44.) An abandoned corporate headquarters building. I’d been chased out of this about two years prior by security, so getting back inside felt like putting long unfinished business to rest. I’ve still got the scar on my inner thigh from nearly castrating myself hopping a barbed wire fence while escaping during my first visit.

45.) The full group went for a casual explore of one of Chicago’s more well known abandoned industrial sites. Anyone who’s explored in Chicago will know this one. I explored it a few years ago, but going back for better shots is never a bad time.

46.) A small group of us split off to try our luck catching the sunset from a rooftop. Definitely a view worth climbing 30+ flights of stairs for.

46.) Later that night we decided to try our luck with an abandoned medical school. Yes, that’s an autopsy theater. Yes, it was as cool as you’re imagining.

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47.) Sorry folks, this one is too hot to post yet. Someday I’ll post it, but not when doing so will endanger a spot as ornate and pristine as this one.

48.) A heavily decayed church deep in the south side of Chicago. I actually found a $20 bill on the floor here- I guess on the south side, the churches tithe you.

49.) Another cool church, this time with a massive mural of Jesus behind the altar.

50.) Yet another church. We explored a lot of churches during Wastepex.

51.) A church with no discreet entry in the middle of a rich neighborhood. It’s amazing the kind of places you can gain access to if you stroll through the front door in a hi-vis vest.

By the end of Wastepex I had been out of work for a month, and my bank account needed refilling. I had a few different seasonal job offers on the table, but only one truly interested me. After my brief visit to Denver I was so enamored with the mine exploration scene in Colorado that I accepted a position in western Colorado and began heading out that way. But to get there, I had to pass back through Kansas.

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52.) I’m gonna sit on this one for a while. Some explorers got in a fair bit of legal trouble here a few weeks after they showed this one to me, so I’m going to keep sitting on my photos to ensure I don’t make their trouble even worse.

53.) The shell of a gas station on the Kansas prairie. A good spot to stretch my legs. I made a post about it a while ago.

After a few days of driving I finally reached Colorado. The city I was living in was just an hour east of the Colorado/Utah border, granting me equal access to both. I quickly got settled and threw myself headfirst into seeing as many spots in both states as I could in six months as I spent more time hanging out with the members of the Bureau of Exploration.

54.) The remnants of an old mining camp I visited as part of my job.

55.) A farmhouse I stumbled on while driving to a festival in the Colorado wilderness. Not much to see here.

56.) A railroad trestle over the Colorado River, partially destroyed by a fire. Walking on it was rather tense, considering the poor structural stability.

57.) A large diameter drain under Denver with a large junction room. One of the ongoing projects of the Bureau of Exploration is to convert this drain into a party space and art display for hosting urbex meetups and underground events, inspired by similar spaces built by the MSP and Kansas City urbex communities.

58.) I’d heard rumor of an abandoned airport control tower on the outskirts of Denver. Unfortunately we discovered that it was already being renovated by a restaurant by the time we got there, but I was able to convince the owner to let us go up inside to take some skyline pictures.

59.) A few derelict train cars taken over by squatters.

60.) This abandoned hospital outbuilding was our go-to nighttime hangout spot in Denver for about a month before the city put serious effort into sealing our entrances. Oh well, we’ll get back inside eventually. It’s not like they can legally demolish it, after all.

61.) While wandering town in search of materials to spruce up the drain in #57 we stumbled upon this greenhouse business that had shut down less than a year prior. I think we were the first to ever find it- not even homeless folks had discovered it yet.

62.) We also stumbled upon this phone factory, which I detailed in this thread.

63.) Grand Junction had a surprising number of large diameter storm drains for a city in the desert. Unfortunately, this was the only one I found that wasn’t flooded to the ceiling with rainwater from the summer monsoons and the Colorado River.

64.) My first foray into Utah led me to the remnants of an old mining town called Sego in the company of a member of the Bureau of Exploration. Unfortunately, most of the town was demolished some decades ago by a flash flood, and little else remains besides the town cemetery and a few crumbling structural walls. Even the mine is inaccessible due to a coal seam fire that burns to this day.

65.) Continuing my expedition into Utah, I ended up at a Cold War era test site for intercontinental ballistic missiles. Featuring several launch pads, a small control bunker, and several empty outbuildings, most of the infrastructure here was scattered over dozens of square miles of desert. Here’s a couple fun facts about this one- graffiti in one building shows that the Strategic Beer Command camped among the ruins about a decade ago, and back during the Cold War this site caused two diplomatic incidents by accidentally lobbing a test missile and a makeshift dirty bomb into Mexico. This photo depicts one of the launch pads, with a blast shield for electric breaker boxes on the left.

66.) A visit to the nearest town led to this abandoned bank. There’s very little left inside, and it looks like it eventually became a souvenir shop before it shut down for good, based on the touristy t-shirts displayed inside.

67.) Right across the street from the bank, we found an abandoned motel and bar. Not too much left behind worth photographing besides the pool table, unfortunately.

68.) Some coke ovens in eastern Utah. They featured in the second half of one of my historic write ups.

69.) From the coke ovens, we continued onward to the ruins of an old coal mining town. This town was once so well designed that it was considered the standard to which all mining towns should be built- but that acclaim wasn’t enough to save it when the mine tapped out. In this photo I’m climbing a piece of hose into the coal tipple, which was used to load coal into railroad car.

70.) We found the remnants of another coal mining town along the side of the highway. Little else remained besides small outbuildings and crumbling walls, and though we found the mine the massive adit appeared to have been blasted shut long ago.

71.) We actually found this stone ruin while stopping for gas. No clue what it used to be, though some kind of shopfront is my best guess. After discovering this spot we decided to call it quits and head home, as we’d been on the road for two long days by this point.

72.) Two weeks later and I found myself back in Utah, checking out a ghost town from the UER Database. It doesn’t look very abandoned these days though- the structures may be derelict, but a creative group of artists decided to turn the entire town into an art display.

73.) Here’s the ruins of Utah’s first suspension bridge over the Colorado River. It was destroyed by a wildfire in the mid-2000s.

74.) An abandoned gondola lift in the deserts of Utah. I made a thread on it here.

75.) Cryptocartography and I checked out this abandoned hospital with some non-explorer friends. They didn’t seem to find it as interesting as we did. Oh, and I made a thread on this one too.

76.) Here’s what was once a modern house built into the side of a cliff. That wasn’t the most interesting part about this though. I’m a trained archaeologist, and as I realized that the house was built on top of an ancient Native American site. There were thousands of lithic (stone) artifacts and even a few structural remnants like hearths scattered across hundreds of yards of desert. Just wandering the site and taking a look at what was left behind was an incredible experience.

77.) I’m not sure what this houseboat was doing in the middle of the desert, hundreds of miles from the nearest large body of water. Some questions weren’t meant to be answered I guess.

78.) Just a random house in the desert, nothing too interesting about this one.

79.) This abandoned observatory was kind of cool, though the equipment was disappointingly removed decades ago. Yet another one I wrote a thread on.

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80.) This one is far too sensitive to post online anywhere. I really wish I could share these photos with you though, because it might be the coolest spot I visited all year. That’s how it goes sometimes though.

81.) I explored this cabin legally while checking up on it to update some paperwork regarding its historic status. This used to be a cow camp deep in the back country for ranchers to stay at while tending their herds.

82.) Here’s the ovens that featured in the first half of the thread linked in #68. These ones are in better shape since they’re maintained in a state of decay as a historic site.

83.) The ghost town of Ashcroft, which is maintained by the US Forest Service as a historic site open to the public. The line between urbex and historic tourism can get kind of thin on national forest land.

84.) I finally managed to check a missile silo off my bucket list. A couple of explorers from Kansas City met up with myself and GarretStopMotion in Colorado, and we drove straight from the airport to an abandoned Titan I missile silo. I was absolutely blown away by it, and I’m pretty sure they were too.

85.) The next night, the four of us explored and set up camp between two houses inside Colorado’s most famous ghost town. A mining town abandoned by order of the EPA in the mid eighties, the modern houses, shops, and mining infrastructure made for a spooky backdrop as we drank some beers around the campfire late at night.

86.) Another cow camp I legally explored as part of my job. There’s actually a second, similar cabin hidden in the fog behind the first. Not only did I explore this one and update the paperwork, I helped to carry out a good amount of restoration and preservation work on the dilapidated structure. It also taught me that the cows are by far the dumbest creatures in the national forests. At one point we got chased away from our cement buckets by a herd of cattle that appeared out of the treeline, hellbent on drinking our buckets of diluted cement- and drink it they did, before disappearing back into the woods from whence they came.

87.) Here’s that necromantic doomsday cult compound I wrote that whole thread on. It was one hell of a story and definitely one of the more interesting places I explored this year just for the history alone.

By this point in the year autumn was well under way, and that meant it was time for me to pay a visit to the Dubuque area for the Clocktoberfest meetup. I spent more time catching up with explorer friends around the campfire than I did actually exploring if I’m being honest, but I still hit a few places.

88.) A classic Clocktoberfest adventure, paddling inflatable rafts through this partially flooded abandoned mine was the perfect opportunity to dress up like pirates. MSP has cops and robbers, Kansas City has cowboys, and Colorado decided we’d make pirates our thing.

89.) This derelict casino boat had been my personal white whale for a couple of years at this point, with three failed expeditions under my belt to try and board her. I guess fourth time’s the charm, and the previous frustrations made exploring the boat all the sweeter.

As fun as it was to hang out with the midwest urbex community again I couldn’t stay, and all too soon I found myself heading back to Colorado. But I didn’t have much time to brood on my departure because I was way too busy working on the logistics for Colorado’s first regional meetup, Weslopex. Cryptocartography and I co-hosted it and threw ourselves into getting ready as soon as I arrived back on the Western Slope.

90.) We kicked Weslopex off with a desert hike to an abandoned mine known to locals for its gorgeous veins of fluorite, calcite, and amethyst crystals. Though the mine itself is small, what it lacked in size it made up for it in beauty. None of us had ever seen crystal veins like this before, and after we had taken plenty of pictures we moved on to the main event.

91.) We set up camp deep in a back country canyon outside a large mine that has been abandoned for nearly a century. We didn’t even plan on making it the main event at first until Cryptocartography and I scouted it out the weekend prior, and we were so amazed that we scrapped all prior Weslopex plans in favor or revamping the entire meetup to center around exploring this mine. The coloration in this photo isn’t light painting- the walls really are blue, green, and yellow thanks to a mix of sulfur, copper sulfide, and copper sulfate deposits coating the walls of the mine. The pastel-colored mineral deposits were unlike anything any of us had even heard of before, and we were more than content to spend the entire meetup exploring this mine alone.

92.) The weekend after Weslopex, Cryptocartography and I decided to finally go on the cross-Utah urbex road trip we’d been talking about all summer. The first location on our list was a partially built solar power array that was never finished. The entire thing relied on using cheap materials to create some Rube Goldberg-esque attempt to generate clean energy, and it was such a scam that the only thing it ever generated were tax fraud charges.

93.) Random farmhouse in the desert. There’s a lot of them on the back roads.

94.) The foundations and walls of a massive surface works facility for a nearby mine. It’s apparently quite popular with local teenagers and airsoft enthusiasts, and Star Wars related graffiti adorned many of the ruins.

95.) An empty electrical substation. I was hoping to find some machinery inside, but alas, no such luck.

96.) The remnants of an abandoned hot spring resort and spa near Salt Lake City. This photo was taken inside what was once either a sauna or sweat lodge, but is now a popular bonfire spot for rebellious Mormon teens.

97.) This stockyard exchange building is rumored to have an incredibly dark history, but it turns out that’s just an urban legend. In reality, its past use as a drug rehab clinic and a haunted house got run through a game of telephone and came out the other side as a completely made up horror story.

98.) Just a sketchy little warehouse I found under a bridge in Salt Lake City, and the last Utah location I explored before heading back to Colorado.

99.) The ruins of a small stone buidling outside Grand Junction. The desk and cairn are part of an art project the Bureau of Exploration built inside, as part of an ongoing attempt to build surrealist art projects in abandonments across Colorado.

100.) This warehouse complex in Denver earned the nickname “Ass Stab Alley” after a member of the Bureau of Exploration was stabbed in the ass by a homeless dude while exploring it. I explored this with him about a year later and we ran into another homeless dude inside, though fortunately he was way more chill.

With summer long since over and Halloween rapidly approaching, it was time for me to leave Colorado behind. I departed at the end of October and returned to Wisconsin so I could spend a few weeks visiting friends and family before winter set in. Despite my busy social schedule I still found some time for exploring.

101. This defunct dam in central Wisconsin was replaced by a modern one a few hundred yards downstream. Now all the sluice gates are locked in the open position and its a rather peaceful place to hang out.

102.) I made a point to visit Sandland to do some digging since I was back in the Midwest. While I was there, I got invited to check out a storm drain that was under construction in the Twin Cities.

103.) On the way back from MSP I stopped at an abandoned hydroelectric power plant in rural Wisconsin. None of the machinery remains and the land it sits on is now a public park, but it made for some nice photos all the same.

104.) I’m going to be honest, there wasn’t much of interest in this abandoned motel. It was a quick in and out, fifteen minute explore.

105.) Like the previous entry, this rural elementary school was a pretty quick explore. Four large empty rooms including the gymnasium, and little else. I didn’t even go looking for it, I actually stumbled across it by chance.

106.) This religious convent gave me quite the scare. I got inside and took a bunch of photos with no problems, but as I was leaving I was surprised from around a corner by a pair of cops who yelled at me to “come out with my hands up.” A combination of fast talking and several large incidents across town that gave them bigger problems than me to worry about led to me getting released with just a warning.

Shortly after that exploration I departed west again, to return to Montana for one more winter so I could wrap up unfinished business. Though it’s been a long year, my journey isn’t done yet- but this year was a pretty good start. And who knows? Maybe I’ll see some of you out there on the road.

Until next time.

Aran