Cheese O takes great photos! 

I have heard a picture is worth a 1000 words. 

I even got to wear the princess crown! how lucky am I? 

High five to MOA and Rose for picking such a rockin' campsite! Dont mind the strange sounds from the surrounding campsites. 

Oh yeah, hey der! Thats a good sunset... 

The extendo weenie roaster. No need to get up or too close to the heat. 

Brian busted! He was asleep with his head on his knees. It was getting to be bedtime for this old crowd for sure. 

It's not often Cyclonauts that one actually, consciously risks one's life. Well sure there's the Tickler, and the Rusty Nail, Partyapalooza and every hut trip, night ride and 'quick spin up Sunshine' we've ever done but I mean risking your life for work, to make a buck and pay the rent. Well yesterday I journeyed to this haunted 100' h grain elevator near Chicago to evaluate for a potential climbing gym. Built in 1910 the building is basically a big pit where farmers would dump their corn thru huge iron louvers into a basement where it would get scooped up in buckets that travel thru large hollow columns 100' up to the attic. From there it's dropped into a hopper and distributed to each of the 21 grain shafts, each from 45'-100' deep. Even in 1910 OSHA must have shit its pants, today stepping foot into this building is akin to drag racing down Flagstaff on one of those ancient wheeled farm implements you see mouldering in abandoned fields. Freddy Krueger wouldn't venture here...Fun! Well up we go!

Two hours later, mentally exhausted from avoiding multiple missing manholes, grates and pipe openings leading to instant death (well instant in the 32'/sec/sec sense) and surrounded by ghosts (pity the poor guy who worked up here every day among the highly combustible grain dust) I contemplate my options...take wet ladder down 7 stories (note top of 95 year old metal ladder no longer attached to building) or...

Kinda hard to make out, since it's unrecognizable as what we would call an "elevator". Made in 1910 this creaky dark rust colored, oh, actually that's not paint, it's just REAL rust cage hangs from two cables roughly the size you would use to lock up your bike, if you were cheap. Below the 'floor' you can see a gap below which is about 75 feet of groaning horror as you descend the grain shaft, the rotten wooden guide track creaking as you push (and hold) the Down button and pray to whatever gods you hold dear.

Pete's Loop baby, a mere hour from the Chalet and ripe for the plucking on a beautiful, but threatening Sunday morn...