Today was about as close to perfect as a roadtrip day can get. Sunny weather, loads of good stuff (planned & unplanned), and the dogs got lots of running in. It was in the upper 70s today – quite a change from the 20s that I’ve almost gotten used to at home.

I only got about an hour’s sleep last night if that so this post will be long on photos and short on text. My post-work nap (I work til 2am) at a NJ Turnpike Service Plaza was not all that restful. Little did I know that the Woodrow Wilson was a haven for feral cats and squirrels. Two of my dogs are nutso about wildlife and they spotted the cats instantly even in the dark. As the sun was coming up, the squirrels were jumping around from tree to tree. My “SHUT UP!”s did silence the barking but there were relentless soft “eeeeee”s and “uff-uff-uff”s. The dogs had a blast on the beach at Fenwick Island and barked their heads off at motorcycles so things should be easier on me tomorrow. The first day of a trip is always the hardest with the shrieking and bouncing around.

On with the photos then. This neat rooster sculpture is installed in front of Goodeals (as in Good Deals, an antiques sort of place) in Newark, DE.

I put a photo of this sign over at Flickr tonight but thought I should include this context shot here since I think the building is pretty neat itself. Surely, there must have been buildings on either side of it originally. And, yes, this place is still in business! It’s in downtown Dover, DE.

I went to the Johnson Victrola Museum in Dover to see their giant Nipper statue (RCA’s doggie icon). The museum’s statue is about 6′ tall. I have other examples of giant Nippers & info about them at my website.

I didn’t know that the museum had a huge Nipper collection. Here’s just one corner:

The Victrola stuff was also very interesting:

I went to Millsboro, DE to check out some neat statues that I’d heard about. I was not disappointed! These are just a few examples of the creations at 2nd Time Designs.

NarrowLarry and World’sLargestThings uploaded a photo for me yesterday. So I thought I’d send them an appropriate thanks-for-thinking-of-me. I got a stranger to take a photo of me with the biker chick. Photography was obviously not his strength as he had trouble getting both of us in the frame.

Also in Millsboro on the way to the sculpture place, I pulled over for this building downtown. It’s much older than what I usually shoot but I thought it was classy and interesting.

Now THIS is much more my thing — from Ocean City, MD. It has to be mid-century but is so tarted up with shingles that it’s hard for even me to say I love it.

A couple more miscellaneous photos before I hit the hay. I’ve been noticing some even fun-er (funner?) U-Haul truck advertisements lately. In addition to this giant squid, I saw one with a group of snakes but couldn’t get to the camera fast enough.

I was in Delaware a good chunk of the day today — enough to notice that they have the smallest license plates I’ve ever seen. I talked to the owner of this one and he explained the whole deal to me. I was too road weary then to really absorb it. But evidently the smaller the number, the older the plate. And there’s a big market for the four number ones — going for something like $15,000. This guy’s plate is a replica — so you can have two plates if you want… Huh? Perhaps some Delaware-an can chime in and straighten this out! Perhaps it’s all explained here but I don’t have the strength to read it right now.