Davern/Dan's Drain Failure and Drake St. Drain

Its been a while since the last update so I thought Id fill the masses in with what has been going on recently:

Either we are really bad at scouting or this drain is really hard to find because after THREE different scouting trips we still havnt found the outfall to Dan's Drain, AKA Davern Street Drain:

1. We go in the dark and spend 2.5 hours scouring the riverside near where we know the drain outfalls. After a long period of stumbling over tripwire vines, getting owned by thorns and burrmountain and getting soaked in the Mississippi we came up with nothing but a strange cement fence wall thing that clearly wasnt a drain and a marina that was nowhere near where we wanted to be and where scared old ladies yelled at us to go away. Failure!

2. This time we go again at night and explore the hills to the west of where we were the other night and swiftly were kicked out by a roving security truck. Luckily, the guy didnt ask us why we were in the forest off the trail with flashlights covered in burrs. We later went on to explore the Drake St. Drain (next)

3. I went personally by bike to check this place out in the light, hoping to have more luck. The concrete wall thing turned out to be sme sort of drain thing: water was dripping inside of it and had two small outfalls to the river but clearly couldnt be acessed by humans. I followed where the tunnel went underground and found rusted manholes but nothing enterable. I went around the rest of the area, but couldnt find a damn thing and had to go back due to time. It was truly:


Well, the second night out we ended up going to the Drake St Drain instead, which was a nice change from being pwnd constantly to actual exploration. Sadly, my camera was locked in the room of a neighbor and so this trip isnt documented with pictures :( We went with Nebulon, who is a friend of Jaques' from the U. We clambered down some sketchy sandstone and made it down to the river to look for the outfall and bam! There it was right in front of us!

We slipped and slid our way through the clay to the main tunnel in the drain which is about high and only 4 feet wide throughout the drain. We hiked a ways back, with a strong wind in our faces. Multiple side tunnels went off to our right and became old 1800's abandoned sandstone sewers which we vowed to explore on the return trip back to the outfall. The min tunnel ended at a dropshft which had a concrete divider that went up maybe 100 feet to a manhole cover and a shallow drain level. We turned back and went down the first old sewer

The sewer had loads of bats (!) on the walls that were hanging, though they didnt seem to mind us (hibernating? It is Nov...) Many sandy side tunnels ran off to our rights and lefts , though they all ded ended at other pipes that were falling apart. We were surprised to come across a bid ol' stairway!! With huge steps!! That dead ended in a brick wall!! It smelled like a sewer on the other side, so we expect its part of the W. 7th sewer maze and the walled off portion was part of the effort to seperate the two systems.

On the way back to the outfall we explored the rest of the side tunnels but nothing interesting was to be found except lots of balls of all kinds (Tennis balls, whiffle balls, plasticy bouncy balls and even marbles) why balls I cannot say, maybe they get trapped easier.

We made it back to the outfall and scrambled up the cliff in the wee hours of the morning and headed back to Jack's abode to sleep peacefully and wonder where the fuck Dan's/Davern Drain is....