The usual stuff about an abandoned missile silo and living in a van.

Oh hey, Bri blogs? I know, it's weird. Everyone forgot, including myself, seeing how it's been so long. But some cool stuff has happened so I suppose that warrants a new post. But don't get used to it.

So I won't bore you with details, but after a great long series of events I decided to move back to Michigan. Colorado was seriously the bomb, though, and it was super sad to leave. But before I left, my pal, Cristina, and I decided to do something extremely epic.

About 45 minutes east of Denver, there is a very tiny, very sit-on-your-front-porch-in-a-rocking-chair-wearing-a-wife-beater-while-holding-your-shotgun-and-beer-esque, type town. It homes an abandoned Titan I missile silo which was used during the Cold War. Here is a slightly summarized picture tour through the whole thing.

Above is our entrance. All you see walking around on the surface are large, circular cement plateaus which once served as the missile launch hatches. In order to find a way into the underground facility, you have to go down this steep hill and find what looks like a drain, but is actually way cooler than a drain because it takes you to this stuff:

 The remnants of people who were smarter than us and brought masks. We probably have cancer now.

 The hugest room in there; the power house. It was filled with tons of generators which is how they created electricity way down there.

One of the actual launch silos, filled in with water and fuel and surely toxic chemicals.

A map of the whole facility.

And headlamps.

It was just about the coolest and most exciting thing I've ever done. A perfect way to wrap up my season in Colorado.

In other news, I live in a van. For those of you who know me, or have read my past posts titled Hobo Week or Bri Herter, professional hobo at your service, you know that I have been preparing for this somewhat homeless lifestyle for quite some time now. It's been pretty exciting so far. Here he is.

His name is Frank. Short for Frankenstein. He got his name from our craigslist mechanic who told me several times how much someone had completely modified him and his insides look like Frankenstein. It seemed to fit.

Reina flew into Denver only in time for Frank and I to go pick her up at the airport and then get on our way to Michigan together. Three or four years ago, she had made me this piggy bank so I could save up for our future road trip. And then here we were. I think Reina said it best with, "We don't even need to make a bucket list. Life makes it for us."

 Although, about a half hour into the trip we noticed a billboard for a wildlife sanctuary. Enough said. 

Lions.

We got yelled at for apparently going down an off-limit road that let us get this close to the tigers:

Pretty cute, right?

 And then he starts licking his chops at you....

The next day we REALLY wanted Dairy Queen. Turns out there is an app just for finding Dairy Queens in the area!

 Three (or four) years of saving up change in this little guy all paid off for this moment:

All in all it was a great trip. And now I live in Michigan again in a van (which I'm sure you already read my facebook status about how much the cops love me for doing so). And also, I TOTALLY understand why people are hobos now. The first couple days I was like, "I need to go do productive things... but I just really love sitting in this park doing nothing." Aside from financial stress, the unemployed life was beautiful. And then I was like, "Maybe since I live in a van I won't have to work very much when I do find a job...." And I guess God thought that was REALLY funny, because two days after that I had somehow managed to get hired twice. Once as a manager at Panera where I'll be working at 4:30am most days (HAHA), and also at The Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, where I'll be working most nights. When will I sleep, you ask? Simple. I won't. There was a point in high school where I had trained my body to only require about six hours of sleep per every four days. I'm sure I can get back to that....

This post is really lame because it's almost all pictures and really no creative words at all. I hate myself a little bit for that, but I also don't care because hey, it's something.