Here We Go! CA, NV, and into UT

Here come the blog posts! This trip turned out to be a three-weeker instead of a five. I’m trying to convince myself of the glass half full. I did get a lot done and covered just under 11,000 miles but still, a bummer. I came home with about 2,700 photos for the website (instead of the usual ~4,000). When my transmission started acting sketchy after going up a grade, I went to a shop in Branson, MO and it would be 2 weeks to even get a replacement. So, I did the sensible thing and headed home. My van ran pretty-much flawlessly all the way home which was a relief but made me question whether I should have powered through my enormous Missouri and Illinois lists. Next year!

Anyhow… I’ll be posting a few photos at posts here for each day of shooting as I add batches of photos to my website (roadarch.com). It’ll probably take about 4 months to get everything Photoshopped, researched, and inserted in the appropriate spot there. I’ll also be posting some different photos over at Flickr just before posting here:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/agilitynut/

I got out of work a couple hours early and motored east through California en route, eventually, to the Midwest. Then, I made some stops in Nevada and Utah the following day. Let’s move on to some photos.

From Lancaster, CA at Cactus Liquor:

and the former Sands Bowl (now Bowlero). I’m sooooo glad they kept this curved, mural with Egyptian figures in painted relief. There are pool tables in the room now but I’m guessing it was something nicer before (dining? event space?):

The “Flying Nun House” in Apple Valley, CA:

A couple of signs from Barstow, CA:

at Tom’s Welding:

From Shoshone, CA – a detail of the globe at the top of the Chas. Brown Market sign (neon now LED rope):

Seemoore’s Ice Cream in Pahrump, NV:

In Boulder City, NV – there were a number of sculptures on my list that I hadn’t shot before:

Moving on to Las Vegas, NV. There were a lot of recently restored neon signs in to shoot – here are just two of them:

Many things that appear at my blog are never uploaded to my website. For example, the super rusty/crusty signs, buildings too funky or modern, modern signs, etc. Here, then, are some modern signs that won’t be at the site but deserve to be shot and included here.

The bird on top of the sign was built (I think) for the Aruba Hotel, the building’s previous occupant, which housed the Thunderbird Lounge. It is a small tribute to the signs at the Thunderbird Hotel built in 1948 and demolished in 2000. That hotel was located further south on Las Vegas Blvd: