We decided to head out to northeast Colorado today despite the heat where a few ghost town websites advertised a bunch of abandoned towns with photog opportunities galore.  Uhh, the websites were wrong and outdated.  That’s not to say we didn’t find any abandoned buildings but the information on one particular website was completely false and outdated.  The plan was to head to the Ault area E of Ft. Collins which was surrounded by abandoned (supposedly!) towns like Keota, Buckingham, Purcell, Nunn, Grover, and Hereford.  Turns out none of these towns are abandoned at all.  Yes, there are some abandoned buildings in the towns but none are true ghost towns.

We decided to go by Purcell first since that is Brian’s last name.  Not abandoned and in fact it is home to the developing Purcell Estates!  We then proceeded E on Highway 14 where we came across the town of Buckingham.  This couldn’t fail because I’ve been here on a storm chase once and I had seen at least 1 abandoned building.  Well, 1 abandoned building is all there is because the rest of them burned down in a fire a few years ago.  Strike 2.  We then traveled N to the town of Keota located in the Pawnee National Grasslands.  Here we found some abandoned houses, barns and other outbuildings.  It wasn’t spectacular but we were happy to finally have something to photo…

Carl and Brian braved going in the first house.  It looked like an asbestos, bird shit ridden cesspool so I passed.  Plus I’m afraid of birds which had several nests in the house and they were none too pleased to have us poking around in there.

A few other abandoned buildings were down the street but they were pretty locked down.  So we loaded back up and continued north toward the town of Grover.  On the way there we saw one other abandoned farm so we pulled off to investigate.  Other than Carl shocking himself on an electrical fence and having an awkward moment with Brian (hahaha!  It was classic!) the farm was a lot like the houses in Keota.  Here’s some pic’s anyway…

Rattle snake fear rushed us out of the tall grasses surrounding the other abandoned sheds on the property so we continued on to Grover.  Grover was actually a reasonably sized town (again, not a ghost town by any means) so we stopped into the market and got some drinks and snacks.  After noticing that a stripper lives there, we also noticed that there was an abandoned mill down the street that didn’t look too locked up so we went and investigated but not before I saw a funny sign and had to immaturely post it.  Insert your own joke…

Yes, I need to grow up...

Anyway, here’s the mill

After this we decided to go to our northernmost target of Hereford but there wasn’t anything there worthy of photographing so we decided to start heading back via Nunn (nothing there either) and Pierce.  Hunger started to sink in so we decided to look for a local bar & grill type of establishment in Pierce.  We saw a place that looked like it would work called the Full Moon Saloon but the ongoing karaoke turned us in another direction.  We got back to Ault and settled on a place called the Bison’s Breath.  It was pretty awesome!  Totally a local dive drinking hole that’ll cook you a burger if you ask nice enough.  The bartender was a really nice girl who told us that it was a good thing we hadn’t stopped at the Full Moon because it’s full of drug dealers.  Literally the waitresses would bring you a line on a tray with your dinner if you knew the right people.  Wow, glad we avoided that place.  We had a burger and a beer and came home via I-25.  Disappointing photo trip but a fun road trip nonetheless.

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