Trip report by Nathan Taylor.

Myself and my two sons (6 and 10) arrived at the silo on Friday, March 26, at approximately 7:00 PM. We set up our tent and spent some time wandering around the silo area. We spent a very windy night sleeping and ended up with the tent tied to the car to keep it upright.

Saturday morning, after some breakfast, we made our way to the schoolhouse. We pulled nails from a load of lumber and also sorted out rotted, broken, or otherwise too far gone lumber for burning. While we worked in and around the schoolhouse several trucks were working to move cows. A couple of them stopped to say hello. One who passed himself as the owner told me to take what we wanted from the schoolhouse but not to worry about cleaning it up or getting it all out as he would just burn off any trash or other material left behind. He also mentioned he had begun stashing some trash inside (we noted some piles of empty feed bags and other new detritus). I told him thank you.

Over lunch we burned off the scab lumber and some cardboard (I should note, the wind was entirely absent by Saturday mid-morning). Once the fire was sufficiently out we retrieved the trailer from the silo and loaded and hauled the lumber to the silo area where it was stacked as much as possible per the existing organizational system. We then lazed around the silo area for a bit awaiting any other arrivals before the boys decided they were ready to move on. We finished packing up and returned to the schoolhouse to load the rest of our tools where we found a triple axle trailer full of livestock buried to the axles in mud. We stuck around long enough to see them bring in a tractor and get him pulled out (another 20-30 minutes even with the tractor employed). On our way out we drove by the natural entrance. We departed the area around 3:30 in the afternoon. We never saw anyone else at the silo area and only the cattlemen at the schoolhouse.