Hi there howdy hello, it's me @otherbrandt again and I'm here to report that all hope is gone.
Recently me and my steaming hot mess of a chronically stressed and incredibly depressed Subaru, Yolo McFukitol, awoke to find ourselves planted on the banks of the mighty Arkansas surrounded by the crumbling remains of an abandoned campground at Osage Point Park in Osage, Oklahoma.
After a hearty breakfast of beer-battered pancakes and several dozen Irish coffees for me and a few gallons of fermented skunk spray for Yolo we went prowling our way through the overgrown wasteland around us searching for the meaning of life. What we found instead were decrepit buildings and cracking rundown roads and picnic tables collapsing into the past, and so much garbage that we couldn't help but wonder if this old US Army Corps of Engineers installment now doubled as the town dump.
It was a place quite simply unlike any other we'd ever seen before. Words do it a great disservice; one must experience it in person in order to have even the foggiest of ideas regarding its true nature.
I'm actually not sure if I should call this a campsite cleanup or an urbex report.
It might be both.
Let's find out:
If I had tried to photograph every item of trash I found that day I would probably still be out there.
So here are just a few of the highlights.
When it was all said and done I think I wasted about four hours of my life on this cleanup.
Some of the things I found,
I wasn't even sure what they were.
I can confirm that every single item on this receipt that could have been littered, was in fact littered, because I found them and picked them up.
But hey, at least I got three free cigarettes out of the deal.
Behold the initial trash pile.
Fear not, for it will get much bigger.
Just as soon as I'm done exploring the ruins of this old restroom facility:
My oh my wasn't that a glorious ride. If you're wondering if I bothered to clean up any of the broken glass and ceramic shards and rusty needles and suspicious little piles of shit I found in there, the answer is hell no.
I exited the wrecked restrooms and re-entered Trashtopia:
Up and down the campground roads I methodically paced, picking up everything from spent fireworks and tennis balls to measuring tape and condom wrappers.
This beer koozie reads "In dog beers I've only had one." If you're wondering if I kept it, the answer is hell yes.
The beer can the koozie came with was empty, but luckily I found this unopened Natty Light to swap it out with.
I don't even know what to say about some of the stuff I found out there. Sure, a piece of a toy truck, why not.
One of the several used oil filters I found. Sure.
And of course a television set. Honestly I would have been a bit surprised if the Osage Point Park/Landfill did not offer at least one of these to its guests. I tried to move it but alas it was rather heavy and if I was going to be explaining how I'd thrown out my back to emergency room staff I wanted a better reason than "I walked into a patch of thorns and weeds taller than me and tried to pick up an old tube TV that clearly didn't work so I could carry it two hundred feet to my campsite and add it to the huge pile of garbage I'd spent all day collecting."
This place was so packed with trash that things were literally bleeding out into the river.
By the time I stumbled across this long-forgotten tent that looked like it still had a body in it I'd had enough. I was ready to call it a day and have a snack and maybe go for a swim.
However upon arriving at the water I discovered that I had some company. It's hard to tell by the picture but this fellow was about three feet long and he was looking at me through cold cloudy lifeless eyes like I was Jonah just waiting to be swallowed whole. So I bid him good day and retreated to my campsite.
And there you have it, Campsite Cleanup #20.
What a glorious ride that was.
I hope I never have to experience it again.
Nature turned that pavilion into an arbor. How nice. Now if nature would just plant some grapes or jasmine underneath it. Upon first glance, it looked like those holes in the bathroom were bullet holes, which definitely gave the place an extra morbid vibe as execution venue. Glad they are just former fixture holes. Those sunset photos evoke memories of that feeling when you take a deep breath, but sometimes you get a deeper breath than normal and it feels as though your lungs have extra expanded. I've been at sunsets like that, where the whole place has that relaxing extra deep breath feeling. It's nice.
The scenery was nice there if you could look past the garbage and ignore the dogs that were barking 24/7 in the trailer park next door. It was a bit eerie to see all the things left behind that nature had claimed. There was a playground with a swingset and slide that I almost missed because the weeds were ten feet high and you could barely make out the metal structures hiding in it. I also found an old volleyball court and about a dozen sets of picnic tables and fire rings. But the bathroom was definitely the main attraction there.
And I think some of those holes might actually have been bullet holes…
!PIZZA
I was wondering if it was close by to town, and forgot to ask that. I suppose it had to be with that plethora of trash there. It would have seemed all the eerier if it was in the middle of nowhere with strange people making nighttime visits and littering in the process. The piece of the truck was certainly eerie. Hopefully that kid it belonged to is fine, and it is only there because his trashy mom decided to trash the place with their trash.
Interesting place to stop in. I hope you are moving on soon though. Has a bit of a nuclear waste dump site vibe to me :)
Oh I'm long gone… I never post anything until I've made tracks, just for safety purposes.
!SAFETYFIRST
Oh good. As a paranoid person, I always assume that other people are less cautious than me:)
Get over yourself @brandt. The emergency is fulla people who walked through tall thorns and grass to pick up old tube TV's and move them to the other trash pile 200 feet away, you're just a number.
Smack talk from someone who couldn't lift a tiny tv, never mind that one at Osage Point Park.
And here I was thinking I had something unique to check myself into the ER for.
Back to the drawing board I guess.
!PIZZA
OMG, that's a whole load of really gorgeous photos! You have an eye @otherbrandt, don't let @brandt steal it from you.
That green door package, is that a condom wrapper? Weirdest one I've ever see if it is.
You could have had yourself a three foot fish fry up if you'd just stuck the right pole out and cast your line.
It certainly looks like one. I think the green door is a dispensary, so this must be a wrapper for a THC-infused condom.
That fish did not look well. It was missing a fin and had weird splotches on its skin. I opted for frying up some hash browns instead.
!PIZZA
You're reading my mind. That's exactly what green door equaled in my imagination.
Hashbrowns, yummmmm. Ewwww, that's not sounding fishedibleworthy. The water had the taint of more than garbage flowing there. Good thing you didn't go for a swim, you might end up like this:
Can't help but wonder if you might also end up like that after using a green door condom.
😂 It's not sold in Canada, so I'm safe from that safe.
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@dandays, I have no idea why you aren't here, dude you have to see these photos!
Because I'm an asshole. Duh!
Big Negative, DUH! This is what happens when you are apron fixated.
If you heard one emergency room story about someone moving an old tube tv through tall thorny grass from one pile to the other and throwing their back out you heard'em all.
You're so jaded and missing @otherbrandt's unique experience of not throwing out his back.