supposedly demolished church

I wrote this church off as demolished. I have searched for it a few times and based on research it was long gone. Good thing I gave it one last chance - it was in the middle of a field! Literally just falling into the ground in a field. This little church must have been quite the site back in the date - it is in very rough condition but still beautiful from an explorers perspective.

Prairie Ukrainian Church

I visited this church in the winter - however the road out to it was impassible and walking through the knee deep snow was not looking promising. I waited until the snow cleared up to visit this church again and just my luck I even got the opportunity to photograph the beautiful full intact interior. It looks like everyone had left and only bugs and small birds had been inside. It was gorgeous and I am glad to have the chance to document it.

the hall

the lightning church

This church was obviously on my list of ukrainian churches to photograph. Looks like most of the other churches I photograph so I didn't except to find what I did. When we got inside we noticed the carpet had little tiny burn marks in it - throughout the whole carpet. We brushed this off as weird until reading the note on the wall which explained the church was hit by lightening and fried every staple in the carpet. I have never seen anything like it so I thought I would share this interesting story.

hidden ukrainian treasure

I have a specific way of finding ukrainian churches and I have spent years marking them out on maps in hopes to visit them all. I was recently informed by someone of a church was not on my mapping system. I figured it was not important until I saw his pictures... wow, i knew i had to see it. I planned for the first available weekend and hit the grids. It was well worth my time. It was beautifully decayed, hidden amongst the trees it was quite the site. Here are some pictures including a pano of the inside.

Happy New Year - 5 years!

Wow - I cannot believe it has been five years. I always seem to base time on how long ago it was that I was wandering the halls of Weyburn Mental or crawling through the tunnels of Fort San. So many locations have come and gone over the years and now it almost feels like this province is in a rut when it comes to abandoned buildings. No major abandoned buildings left and no large locations about to be abandoned and accessible. I have watched a few buildings be abandoned and demolished with no time to document. I have also managed to find a couple large locations hidden away in places I never excepted in this province.

Every year I seem to go down at least 20 posts and last year was no exception. This year will also not help that trend. I do have have a few trips planned and locations in mind to document. I plan to continue my documentation of every Ukrainian church in the province. Most of my posts will be from spring - fall when the weather is nice and the roads are good.

Keep an eye out for updates on the website, i plan to post more locations as well as keep it up to date. Designs of both the website and blog will get a revamp over the next couple weeks. Locations that you may not have seen before will be posted as they may have been missed or could not be posted at the time to protect privacy.

I have high hopes for this year as I have better gear and some awesome locations in mind.