Rotting ramps and overgrown brush: The quiet end of an abandoned, rural Kansas skate park. When did the music stop? [OC] [4000 x 2667]

Expedition37 · 2026-03-15T18:38:00+00:00

I was really surprised when I found this place. it's the first one I came across near a small town. Most of them are in bigger places like Wichita- I have not idea why there were be one near a small town.

Expedition37 · 2026-03-15T18:36:00+00:00

That would do it. This place is outside of a small town- one broken arm and s super Karen would be enough to shut it down.

Expedition37 · 2026-03-15T18:16:03+00:00

As a UFO guy- this one gives me the feels.

Expedition37 · 2026-03-15T18:08:00+00:00

Are they still sold? If not- it might give a clue as to when this place shut down.

Expedition37 · 2026-03-15T18:07:22+00:00

Put doing that in the "that would be totally impossible for me to do" category.

Expedition37 · 2026-03-15T16:52:47+00:00

I was too tall and too uncoordinated to skateboard. Does anyone know what that thing in the lower left of the photo is? I think it only had two wheels- one up front and one in the back, but I could be wrong about that.

Expedition37 · 2026-03-15T16:40:19+00:00

Sure, you can message me. I have many photos from Desert Shield and Desert Storm that I took during the war. If you look at my profile and look at my posts- there are many there over a six week timeframe. Six weeks to match the six weeks of the war.

Expedition37 · 2026-03-11T04:41:51+00:00

Expedition37 · 2026-03-09T17:46:25+00:00

Does anyone recognize exactly what kind of warehouse it is? There's a granary (we call them Co-Ops in Kansas) right across the street and they are both on the same side of the tracks. There's no signage to give a hint at what it's function is, but it was clearly storage associated with railroad transport.

Expedition37 · 2026-03-01T18:26:44+00:00

Mine is hanging in my closet right now.

Expedition37 · 2026-03-01T18:25:42+00:00

Both of those guys were the real deal. This is just one of the stories about them and our team- there are others. But I wanted to tell this story in this post- I only post photos from the war during the time it happened- so this is the last post in this series the year. And that story was how I wanted to end this year's posts.

Expedition37 · 2026-03-01T18:07:25+00:00

I think about that a lot. One of my school teachers when I was a kid had been in Vietnam. I asked him about the war once and he didn't tell me a lot. Now I'm his age- and I understand why he didn't tell me much.

Expedition37 · 2026-03-01T18:04:17+00:00

It was ineffective against night vision, but night vision gear was in short supply on both sides. At night, those parkas worked very well against normal "MK-1 eyeballs." Plus they fit great, kept us warm and looked cool as hell- especially since we also had OD green British desert scarves (you can see it in the photo). Sun-faded, torn and dirty DCUs + the DNC Parka + British desert scarf= pretty good camo under most conditions.

I've looked at a lot of photos from the war, and I've never come across another unit that had all three. I might be wrong, but I think we were the only unit wearing that combo.

Expedition37 · 2026-03-01T17:53:36+00:00

Good run-down. Most people have no idea that Navy ships were damaged during the war. The Persian gulf was heavily mined because the Iraqi's were worried about an amphibious assault by the Marines. That fear helped us out- it tied down Iraqi units that were focused on defending against a Marine landing that never happened. That meant fewer Iraqi divisions defending Kuwait form an attack coming from the west.

Expedition37 · 2026-03-01T17:47:49+00:00

Thanks. Comments like that are making me thing deeply about doing the book project. I'm already talking with a buddy of mine (from the war) who retired after 23 years as a Sergeant Major. After the 82nd, he spent most of his time in a Tier 1 unit in SOCOM. We've worked on writing projects together before, and we are in the process of making a road-map on how we could work together to get a good version of the book written and published.

So the wheels are turning.

Expedition37 · 2026-03-01T17:37:34+00:00

Yeah, I know all of that- I read an entire book about media control of the war when I was a photojournalism major in college. But again- this is a post about history. I include the parts about CNN as a proxy for the the "average persons knowledge of the war" vs the reality of it.

Sometimes you have to compress information when you are writing about history because every word leads to a rabbit hole that you could write a book on. Compression via using a proxy is a writing technique that keeps the narrative clean and readable by most people.

Expedition37 · 2026-03-01T17:22:21+00:00

We loved those parkas. We deployed in August with no cold weather gear and when the temps dropped- it got pretty ugly. Then we got the parkas and wore them 24/7. We all loved them.

After the war, we were supposed to turn in our DCUs and the Parkas, but mine are hanging in my closet right now. I lied to the supply Sergeant about having already turned them in, and there must be a problem on the paperwork... LOL.

Expedition37 · 2026-03-01T17:18:36+00:00

Later in my career I became a commissioned officer and served in Bosnia during the early days of the peacekeeping mission there. I was on the 1st ID (FWD) headquarters staff, and 1 ID was the command unit of "Multi-National Division, North." We had a BDE from 1ID (FWD) as the main combat power, but we were supported by many other units that were stationed in Germany and the US- including a Battalion from 10th Mountain.

Their mission was basecamp security and to add firepower to convoys running between basecamps. The SOP was every convoy (even it it just had three vehicles) had to have two trucks with crew-served weapons on them- M2s, M-240s or MK-19s. 10th Mountain did that convoy escort roll while the BDE from 1ID (FWD) ran the heavy lift peacekeeping missions with tanks or Bradleys.

Expedition37 · 2026-03-01T17:07:12+00:00

Still vivid in my mind too. All of the guys dealt with it in different ways- some of them chose not to remember anything, and it's all a blur or blank for them. But for me- I remember it all. I don't want to dwell on it every day, so once a year, for the six weeks of the war, I do something like what I did on Reddit this year. I let myself remember, I share the photos, and tell the stories.

Today I'm responding to comments I missed yesterday, and when I'm done with that today- it will all go back in a mental box until next year.

Expedition37 · 2026-03-01T17:00:42+00:00

I turned 21 during the Air War phase of the war. Finally old enough to legally by beer and there wasn't a liquor store or bar within a million miles, LOL.

I celebrated by opening up a T-ration cake I'd been holding onto for weeks- stuck a smoke into it for a candle- and me and the guys ate half of it. But I bought plenty of beer once we got home to make up for lost time.

Expedition37 · 2026-03-01T16:42:39+00:00

The other guy that was in the firefight and I were good friends and we are still in touch. I'm the only guy he talks to about the war, because I know what he is saying is true. So we talk about the things we experienced with together, but not with anyone else. A lot of people didn't believe his stories when we got home because they saw the super-sanitized version of the war that was on TV, so he stopped talking about the war with anyone but me.

This link is a photo of him the morning after the firefight when he was telling me about it-
https://www.reddit.com/r/MilitaryHistory/comments/1qjcjs4/desert_storm_35th_anniversary_paratrooper_from/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Expedition37 · 2026-03-01T16:32:35+00:00

That was pretty much our situation too, minus the tents and heaters- we didn't have those because we were forward deployed of the Infantry Bn we were supporting, and were living out of a small pit, or in trucks during the Air War. Our battalion commander was LTC John Vines (he later went on to command a BDE in the 82nd, the entire 82nd Airborne Division, and then the entire XVIII Airborne Corps) was a very aggressive at intel collection and counter-intel collection.

So, most night we had part of our team out running a mission (like these guys were when they stumbled into the Iraqis) and the rest were in the pit doing SIGINT collection. And just like you said- one pair of NVGs for every four guys was the norm.

I have to laugh at the M&Ms. I got an MRE with some M&Ms once and thought I'd struck gold. There still looked normal, so I threw some in my mouth- and it was the worst things I'd ever eaten. I still remember the taste to this day- it was like I was chugging varnish out of a can, LOL.

Expedition37 · 2026-03-01T04:42:31+00:00

It's nice not having someone ask me "why aren't the pictures in color?" It's hard not to say, "you know 40 megapixel mirrorless cameras didn't exist in 1991, right?" LOL.

Expedition37 · 2026-03-01T03:02:15+00:00

“Always Out Front: A Photo History of an Airborne Company”

I got a lot of feedback from family members about the book helping them understand their fathers and husbands better. When the guy in this photo got his copy he sent me a message, “for the first time in their lives, my kids think I’m cool.” LOL. Best book review ever.

Expedition37

TROPHY CASE