Trip 1: Max Action & Skully – 7/00
Trip 2: Max Action, Skully, & Urban Waste – 10/00

     Action Squad has made two excursions into the Upper Post abandoned military buildings near Fort Snelling.  The structures are near the airport, and are semi-maintained; the lawn areas around some of them are mowed, etc, although the buildings are falling into disrepair.  In the buildings we got into, peeling paint, sagging floors, and holes in the walls were the norm, although some were in far better shape, and one in far worse.  The area contains both abandoned institutional buildings and houses; we’ve focused on the larger and more interesting structures and left the houses alone.  All the structures are boarded up to some extent, although some are very easy to access, while others would require board removal (how distasteful!) to enter. 

     All of the photos except the black and white exterior shot are from our 2nd trip.  We had planned on just getting some exterior shots for the website, and then leaving when someone told us to leave (it was midday and there were military types all over the area).  However, we walked about as if we belonged and no one stopped us, and we wound up deciding to get some interior shots as well.  Of course, we’d left the flashlights in the car (since we’d not at all planned on going inside), and we were all too lazy to go back to fetch them.  Since most of the buildings’ windows were boarded shut, we wound up creeping about in the dark quite a bit.  Skully’s lighter and the shitty paper torch we made were of little help.

     Raccoons had taken over one of the larger buildings; it was full of their droppings and weird little human-looking footprints.  I think they were sleeping in the attic while we were there: the floor was very thin and rotten up there, and we only popped our heads up and looked around for a minute.

     Overall, they were really neat buildings to poke around in, considering they had only been vacant for maybe 10 years or so.  Our lack of a light made things even better, of course.  I won’t name names, but man, the two people that were not Max Action were pretty damn afraid of the dark in the basements.

     Ahem.  ;)