A prescription for adventure

The shortened daylight hours at this time of the year leaves us no choice to but get up early and be on the road as soon as possible. Before we headed out, we indulged in the complimentary breakfast offered by our hotel. We were pleasantly surprised. There were 5 available hot items on top of breads, cereals, and assorted pastries. Pretty impressive!

Our first stop of the day was a large complex of buildings that were previously used as a state psychiatric hospital. We could see the buildings from the parking lot of a strip mall on the adjoining property. They were a short distance away across a forested area. We cautiously made our way through the forested area. Halfway through, we were approached by a man on an all-terrain vehicle. We patiently waited for him to reach us. He simply wanted to let us know that he had seen some hunters in the area and that we should keep an eye out for them. We breathed a sigh of relief, thanked him, and then parted ways. We continued on through the forest towards the complex. Once we arrived, we spent several hours on the property exploring various buildings. The main building was several stories tall and contained administrative offices. There was also a small chapel with colourful stained glass windows. When we moved from the main building to one of the smaller buildings, we caught sight of a pickup truck driving around the property.  This put us on edge. We knew that all the local roads leading in to the complex were gated and chained shut. We continued on with greater caution. We explored one more building and then decided to head back to the car. We retraced our steps back through the complex and the forested area. We emerged at the strip mall parking lot and walked casually towards the car. As we walked, a white pickup truck drove towards us and then stopped. The driver rolled down his passenger window and leaned over to say a few words to us. He claimed to be a property manager of the complex we just left and warned us not to return in the near future or we would risk dealing with law enforcement. We assured him that we had no plans to return any time soon. The conversation continued for a few more minutes after which we quickly packed up and left.

We had originally planned to go to a second hospital complex but decided to skip it as we had spent so much time at the first hospital complex. We headed to our hotel instead. We had chosen the hotel location based on its proximity to the next site, an abandoned water treatment plant, which we planned to visit in the morning. Since it was already dark, we decided this was the perfect opportunity to quickly scout out that location to ensure we would not have any difficulties in the morning. The building was in the middle of a residential area so entering and leaving the building would be tricky during daylight hours. After the scouting, it was decided the building interior was not interesting enough for us to return in the morning. We continued to our hotel and ordered pizza delivery for dinner. It was a shorter day than we expected.