Finding out the location	very easy
Access	very hard
Safety	unsafe
Risk of being seen	high
General condition of the place	bad
Traces of vandalism	none or very few
Good place for taking pictures?	good
Did you see other people?	none or very few

Visit date    February 22 2021 at 3 hr
Visit duration    2 hours

Sometimes it takes more than one visit and in this case, I have visited one of the three bandos twice. Since the snow, no kids were in the field by the empty middle school playing. On my first visit to the building about a month ago, there were. For that reason, I chose a door in the back, out of sight. The door did not have plywood but instead a metal grate screwed over the window part. It was to thick for tin snips so bolt cutters where necessary. It took almost an hour to snap the iron links into an entire square to fit my body through. Once that was a success, I had to hammer down the bottom row of snipped iron bars so that when I went through I wouldn’t tear my flesh. I also had to pop out the plexiglass window. That was a bitch as well. The whole ordeal took about an hour and fifteen minutes and I was fortunate that no one saw me. I’d like to say that I rolled in like a ninja but even still, I scratched up my thighs and ripped my coat. Luckily it’s a work coat.

Lil history: The middle school was over populated so the city constructed a smaller school across the street titled “The Learning Annex. Once they remodeled the local library, the “Annex” became a temporary library. At some point, part of the middle school went ablaze. This was several years ago and there wasn’t much evidence of a fire. There was a string of yellow temp lighting on the ceiling of the second floor so I presume they had intended on reconstruction at one point. Most likely, the city was short on funds. This is also why I’ve found so many bandos in the same vicinity.

So when I first walked in as an urbexer, the details that caught my eye were the antique railings, door casings, and mill work. The second thing I ogled over were the rows of blue lockers accentuated by orange rust. When walked into the classrooms, with my chargeable husky light I noticed they were totally bare. No desks. No chairs. Only a blackboard and soft hardwoods with holes that showed the classrooms below.

So the classrooms suck, right? Second instinct was to ask myself where the gym was and also the theater. Luckily they were directly across from each other and I didn’t have to do too much looking. Both arenas had two floors and the school itself was only three floors plus a basement level.

The theater, although unscathed by vandalism, was rather bleak. I was impressed that the curtain wasn’t ripped and still neatly pleated. Just as the rest of the building it was very dark. All the windows including the ones on the third floor were buttoned up.

The gym was the highlight of my bando trip ; score boards, and a climbing apparatus that hung from the ceiling. I started to climb it but then reframed remembering I was by myself and the floor had cracks in it. The floors were soft mostly everywhere except for the main hallways.

I didn’t get to go into the stable or annex a second time because it was really dark, and there’s such a heaping pile of crap in the stable. I want to revisit the stable because it houses all of the old contents of the middle school; desks, chairs, books, even old jungle gym parts. The annex looks like a glorious find from the outside with its fine mill work and colorfully painted plywood... inside its completely gutted. The most exciting thing about the annex was the boiler and I’m not even gonna post that because I’ve seen cooler boilers during mill excursions. Anyway! I love this town. Found a boarded church and theater nearby, cracked into those as well...need to see if the theater is still opened because it’s been a month. Also a prep school... I’m gonna stop the ramble here! I’d highly recommend it if I recommended my finds lol. I have like one contact I’ve shared them with, as people tend to destroy things over time with over trading.

  Text and photos are by D4mge_C4se. Click here to see D4mge_C4se's profile and other reports.

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