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ROADTRIPS, WEBSITE ADDITIONS & OTHER STUFF
Future Trips
These are the tentative summer trip plans:
2024: MO, IL, IN, and some OH/KY
2025: TN, SC, NC, and some AL
2026: IA, MN, WI, MI
2027: OH, PA, MD, WV, and some VA
2028: retirement! Northeast
2029: Canada & Alaska
June 2023 Trip
I just returned from this summer's trip which focused on Colorado and Kansas. I planned on 5 weeks but had to cut things off at 3 weeks due to mechanical troubles. As usual on these trips, I posted a few photos each night from that day's shooting at Instagram. It will probably take me about 5 months to get the approximately 2,700 photos from this trip up at my website.
February - May 2023
I put together the phone maps and printed lists for this summer's five-week Midwest trip. I added hundreds of links throughout my website's blue boxes as placeholders for things that I haven't been able to shoot yet. I took a few roadtrips in April and May to make sure that my van, cameras, laptop, etc. were ready for the June trip. I added those Southern & Northern California and Reno area photos to my website. I also added some photos from these trips to Instagram, my blog, and Flickr.
November 2022 - January 2023
I completed my annual winter project: checking all of my pages for dead external links, splitting up long pages, and clicking on all the map links in the descriptions to see what's changed and updating the descriptions to indicate what's gone, remodeled, repainted, or restored. As I discovered this "news," I also posted the most noteworthy changes to my blog.
June/July 2022 Trip
This five-week, 19,971-mile trip included Utah, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska, and a little bit of Colorado. While on the road, I posted about a dozen photos each night which were taken that day at Instagram. I took more than 4,000 photos which have all been added to my website. As I added each day's photos to the various sections at my website, I posted some of them to Flickr and my blog (links above in the yellow bar).
Interviews and Presentations
In the past few years, these groups and individuals featured me in podcasts and interviews: Backroadtripster, Mondo Neon, Stress Less Camping, and the California Preservation Foundation. I have also been a presenter, sponsor, and participant for the Neon Speaks Festival & Symposium since it started in 2018. I posted the slides for the 2023 presentation here.
Vintage Signs Book
I wrote a book in 2018 about vintage signs entitled "Vintage Signs of America". It's a paperback and just under 100 pages. There are about 175 photos, each showing a different sign with histories about each one. The publisher went out of business in 2023 but the book is still available online for now while supplies last or used at places like Amazon.
SCA Journal Articles
I have been writing the feature articles about signs and a sign news column for the Society for Commercial Archeology continuously since 2007. You can order back issues and digital downloads of the Journal and Road Notes at the SCA website. I also have companion pages with other examples of the sign themes/types at my website for most of the Journal articles. Here are some of the most recent ones:
December 2022: Shoe- and Boot-Shaped Signs
July 2022: Clock Signs
December 2021: House Signs
July 2021: Welcome Signs
December 2020: Flame Signs
July 2020: Reddy Kilowatt &
Willie Wiredhand Signs
December 2019: Scaffold Signs
July 2019: Diving Women Signs
December 2018: Working Men Signs
July 2018: Norge Village Signs
December 2017: Happy Bear Signs
July 2017: Car Signs
full list of SCA companion pages: here
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WHERE IS IT?
Many of you have asked me for the locations of various places or suggested that I add addresses. However, instead of listing addresses, I include what I hope is even better for all of us. These "[map]" hyperlinks at the end of descriptions link to Google Street View maps of the building, sign, or statue being described. Maybe you're like me and enjoy traveling virtually on-line and seeing these places in the context of nearby buildings or scrolling around the place in different directions or even in satellite view.
Since a good percentage of the Google cars have taken photos within the past year or two, these maps make it easy for me (and you) to verify if something is still there or if it's been altered. These maps can also help you put together your own lists and maps of places to see and shoot. Quick tip: if you copy the longitude and latitude (e.g., 43.0810917,-76.1167953) from any of those map links in the browser, you can quickly build your own maps at Google's My Maps or add them to your lists for pinpoint accuracy.
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