I’ve gone most of my life thinking that Iowa and Idaho were the same places. Apparently, they’re not. Idaho actually has some beautiful national parks, and is in a very different part of the country. Unfortunately for this trip, we didn’t have the time to stop in Idaho. After leaving the Airbnb in Parma, we continued onward to Portland.
A little while after crossing the Idaho-Oregon border, we turned a corner to find a huge cement structure covered in graffiti against the backdrop of some gnarly looking mountains. Some of you may know that I have a soft spot in my heart for graffiti. I also love climbing. Abandoned buildings tend to have a lot of things to climb, and all sorts of graffiti. This spot had all of that with a bonus mountain view.
We got off the highway at the next exit and navigated our way back towards the building on side roads. We found a road leading up to the hill. Now, the sign at the beginning of the road did say “construction vehicles only” but come on, define construction…
It makes sense why the town doesn’t want people to go here. Like a blogger who visited wrote “There are many, many ways to get dead here. The most obvious are gravity-assisted: sudden pits, false floors, collapsing beams. But there are also many serrated edges, rusty pointed pipes that reek of lockjaw and gangrene; ragged glass and naked edges of sheet metal.” Honestly though, you just have to be cautious and not jump down any cliffs or onto serrated metal.
We spent the next hour climbing on, over, and around the old structures and trying not to “get dead” but to still have fun. When a sheriff drove by we decided that was our queue to go and ran up the hill back to the car. We were half expecting the sheriff to be waiting for us by our car. Luckily this wasn’t the case, and we drove back to the road to Portland.
We later learned that it was an old cement factory that closed in the 70s after the limestone dried up. We decided that were going to make visiting abandoned buildings a priority for the rest of the trip. Buildings with people just don’t have the same charm… #urbexeverywhere
(–@beenrukavin)
Ben & Jerry's Americone Dream (ft. Yung Charlotte) 