we’re going downown, baby

Before the rain returned, we got a chance to hit up downtown Willow Springs yesterday. Being a poor rural town, there are lots of old decrepit buildings, crumbling houses and barns. We walked down Main Street which is lined with two-story brick buildings, most of which are empty, a few scary restaurants and a pleasant little park that was filled with dogwood trees. The buildings were painted with murals and advertisements about a million and a half years ago so it made for good picture takin’.

After eating at the local Sonic, we decided to head toward the train tracks which encircle the city. Several old railroad cars sat rusting away on the tracks, along with huge piles of wooden planks on the sidelines just waiting to go somewhere. We came across several buildings along the tracks that were just begging to be explored but were locked up nice and tight. Our favorite discovery was an old soda processing/distribution plant that was one of those really old brick buildings that you would just love to buy, gut, and renovate to the teeth (if not for it’s location, of course). It was abandoned at some point a long time ago, and it was still full of floor-to-ceiling racks of glass soda bottles and rotting office furniture. I would’ve given anything to get inside but it was home to a group of feral cats and loads of broken glass.
Well, Spring has certainly arrived and the flowers are a-bloomin’. It’s already getting quite warm here (it got up to 80 degrees today) but hopefully the rain will cool it off a bit. Hopefully soon we’ll be able to get some shots of the surrounding countryside as it is quite beautiful this time of year.