BEFORES .Next up in the scary series:the main lodge community room…When we started this camp resurrection, we found things we wish we had not seen..In cleaning it out, we filled two dumpsters with junk, trailers with donations, and bonfire fodder. Decades of deferred maintenance resulted in this space converted into a hoarders den:- Full sized grocery carts stashed to push around from room to room.- 15-gallon dairy farm iodine tanks, used for water storage?- Piles of 4×8 sheets of of styrofoam boarding up the walls as makeshift insulation.- Dozens of junk chairs.(And so much more that we can’t even describe).But we also found a large advertising photo from the 40s/50s when this place had once been “The Wandwega Hotel” And Wandawega Lake Resort, including a supper club for guests that had a jukebox, proper custom table linens and rows of tables neatly set with Fiestaware and Early California china. In the months of digging our way through to daylight – we would find the original restaurant tables (in basements and attics) and all those original dishes (in abandoned shelving behind paneling). We found artifacts that told the story of decades of vacationers before us (their books, records, remnants of the Church, etc.)..What we found the most valuable is the realization that places -like people, at times -can lose their way. They fall into the hands of those without the means or will to care for them, and then experience setbacks. Sometimes those setbacks can destroy them.But sometimes there can still be a little light inside that if you look damn hard, you can find and pull back out; pull it back to it’s best self..We always try to look for the light..MORE befores at 30 days of before and afters at: #wandawegarehabs