merry christmas!

Merry Christmas from Vanished Compass and SaskUrbex!

 Our annual Christmas trip to a town hall full of Christmas decorations for our group picture.

churches of size

I had heard about a small Ukrainian church that I had missed photographing in an area I am very interested in. I spent a couple days planning a possible route and when the opportunity came up SaskUrbex and I went out to check things out. Because the light fades fast we had to start picking and choosing what we wanted to photograph as the sun was fading and the amount of churches and schools in the area had become overwhelming. We stopped to visit what we thought would be the most interesting. It was a very productive day and here are some of my favorite photos!

Highlights:

- finding so many churches
- accessing a large church, abandoned but completely intact
- finding the largest bible I have ever seen in my life
- photographing a very large furnace with coal bucket beside it
- ringing the bell in a bell tour
- shooting some video of these locations
- getting out of the house and hitting the grids!

hill billy ghost town

I went up to my cabin and decided to do some exploring in the area. The area north of my cabin is what people like to call "hill billy country". It's full of small, mostly abandoned towns where people will live in virtually any type of housing and most run on wood stoves. This area is also full of hunters during the right season as it is quite forested. I spent a few hours driving through some of the towns and came across this one, a small quaint town full of abandoned houses and buses convereted into homes.. thats right - a bus house.

driving the rail line

Went up to my cabin, took a few hours to drive the old rail line and came across a few interesting ghost towns, abandoned churches, hall, school, etc. There was only so far we could go until we reached a place where they removed a bridge. We enjoyed the time we had searching for long abandoned locations.

 

sask's own ski tunnel

Who would have thought a "flat" province would have so many abandoned ski hills?

My third ski hill in the past few years, this was is the least exciting but still has its perks. At one time it could brag about "Saskatchewan's only ski tunnel" - this long abandoned ski hill has been turned into biking trails. The chalet remains boarded up, its history locked inside. The lifts still going up the hill and cables laying on the ground.

I also found an abandoned church on my way home from this hill so I decided to share that as well!

fall advantage

Made the most out of my weekend and continued up to another area that I use to explore but now that I live farther away I haven't been to in a couple years. It was nice to return and with no leaves on the trees it was much easier to find some of these buildings.