Alrighty then — let’s play catch up.  Yesterday’s weather was so gorgeous and today was so miserable.  More about that later in the Day 25 post that I’ll be working on right after this one.

I started the day in Pratt.  I trekked back there late the night before so I’d be poised to photo the Donald’s Serva-teria sign in the morning (photo & video over at Flickr).  But I miscalculated the alarm because I hadn’t adjusted it for the time zone change.  Found myself up an hour too early (they open at 6am) but at least I was able to get the Flickr stuff up because of that.

Onward to Kingman after that.  I’m sure this vacuum-molded sign must have been mass-produced but I’ve never seen another one.  I’m a sucker for anything mortar & pestle.  Endless & subtle variation on a theme:

This sign also in Kingman.  I believe this motel is now apartments.

Now on to Wichita where we spent most of the day.  There are apparently 4 of 6 of this chain’s locations left.  This is #6:
http://www.dognshake.com/locations/
History of the chain which was founded in 1948:
http://www.dognshake.com/our-history/

I found out about these marble curb signs from US 71’s Flickr stream and wanted to see them for myself:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/us_71/3902336561/

The Mentholatum Building is one of my favorites in Wichita:
http://members.cox.net/wichitahpa/Mentholatum%20Building.html

A very neat donut shop on the eastside of downtown — the Donut Whole:
http://www.thedonutwhole.com/

All of the donuts are the cake type and I usually prefer the glazed type which are air-ier.  But I had to show my support for the giant chicken on the roof.  The 3 selected flavors posed on the counter, left to right:  peach cobbler, lemon cooler and maple nut.  36 hours later, of course they’re gone!  Hey, I need rewards for all that driving and sugar to keep me up late at night to write these things.  The donut itself was yummy — tasted just like really good cake.  But I think the icing was a little too much in quantity and sweetness.

Signs, signs — I hope you like signs.  Crusty but not too rusty:

A couple nice parking signs downtown (no book deal yet):

The Dyne-Quik is a Valentine diner — unfortunately, closed for many years:
http://www.kshs.org/diners/kansas/southcentral/wichita/dyne.htm

Public art at the center of downtown.  Lots of annoying bronze children playing.  But this was more unusual.  Dogs (or foxes?) and ducks.  One barks at a few of them on top of the something-or-other.  While another dog-fox carries off an apparently dead duck in his mouth.  Rather graphic, no?  And they seemed to be easy to trip over to me.  But my Wichita friend assures me that people don’t walk around downtown much.

I had never noticed this building before.  It was originally designed as it is now:  as a  residence above the retail space.

Just next door is this building which I suspect was originally a Firestone Tire store.  Here’s one with a similar pylon tower in San Mateo, CA:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/agilitynut/2829998310/

Moving on to towns outside of Wichita — this sign was in El Dorado:

Time for a real meal!  My night off from blogging and Flickring was spent with my email pal, Glenda.  She’s taught me practically everything I know about Wichita and has sent me countless photos over the years for my website.  We had dinner at the El Maguey (translates agave plant) Mexican restaurant in Winfield:

Yours truly — the face behind the camera, the website, and these blog postings.  Yes, I wear my glasses on my head now nearly 24 hours per day. Classy:

 Glenda was getting way ahead of me:

But I caught up:

(kidding)  Note the splash on the front of my t-shirt.  Nice.  Can’t take me anywhere.

OK, so that takes care of the obligatory photo of me for each big roadtrip.  Now, as requested by several of my followers, a plate of real food.  This (at bottom) was my veggie combo:  enchilada, burrito & chalupa.  Although they basically all tasted the same to me.  My friend got some beefy guac-y thing (top):

OK — off to work on today’s photos & blog post now.

A gorgeous day for taking photos.  I’ve got them all ready for you but I need to hit the road.  I had a fun night off visiting with a friend.  This morning, the weather has taken a dive.  Pouring, miserable rain.  So I was at least able to make use of the downtime to work on photos & get them up at Flickr.  Tonight, I’ll get the photos up for this post and the next one with whatever I’m able to shoot in this slop.  The plan is/was to finish KS and start on the southern MO stuff.

Much cooler — high maybe 80?  But pretty nasty grey and rainy for the most part.  Until the last couple hours.  So not the prettiest of pictures — but still better than nothing until I can get out here the next time.  I’m writing this the morning after as the sun is just coming up.  On one side, those nasty black clouds and the other side more promising with clear mixed with orangey.  The orangey sky is where I’m heading.

The dogs and Sparkle are all great.  Just want to bang out this post before I get too backed up.  Definitely socializing tonight and won’t have time to post.

I stumbled upon another former Ku-Ku restaurant.  This one in Garden City.  They botched it up with that box in front and the reroofing didn’t help.  Here’s another one and the info in the caption:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/agilitynut/4883816617/

A couple old motels hanging on in Dodge City:

This one also at the Bel-Air — nice day, huh?

I had a mild bout of food poisoning or something and wound up spending more time in Kinsley than expected.  I think it might have been that egg sandwich?  But I’m all better now.  I prowled around town a bit as I recuperated and found this small town mid-century bank.  Note a very live-able 73 degrees – but I’ll take the sun and 100 degrees over this.

From Larned:

Another from Larned.  I’ve seen a lot of these plastic Carrier signs in Kansas:

From downtown Pratt.  Probably their nicest Art Deco building and they’ve mucked it up with this crappy sign/clock:

Let’s call this one “Moderne Building with Trailer”.  No way to avoid it.  Maybe on a sunnier day in the future, they’ll have moved this thing. 

A Valentine diner in Ellinwood:
http://www.kshs.org/diners/kansas/northcentral/ellinwood.htm

Two chainsaw wood carvings in McPherson.  This woman doesn’t seem to be standing near a school.  There is a church across the street but I don’t think that’s the connection.

And in front of Central Christian College — mascot I presume:

I briefly visited with Erika Nelson of World’s Largest Things…
http://www.worldslargestthings.com/aboutus.htm

who was in Newton working with some folks on a big mural downtown.  They’ll be painting it until mid-September.  A lot of prep goes into it.  This color mock-up is roughly what it will look like (taken from above, ladder visible at bottom of photo):

One of the guys she’s working with did this wall mural in Hutchinson.  The one in Newton will be about the same size:

Erika’s art car, “Scout”, was there at the gallery where the planning is taking place. I could not get a good shot of it since it was in a tricky spot and the sun was not in my favor.  Suffice it so say there are lots of dinosaurs and other critters embedded in tar, children’s ponies in the back pierced by arrows, astroturf, etc. and “Combat Generica” emblazoned on the side.  Here’s another photo of Scout but it still doesn’t show much:
http://www.worldslargestthings.com/images/scout/door_shot.jpg

It wound up being a very quick meeting since she was hard at work.  I was to return at night to witness the outline being projected and painted onto the wall.  But there was a problem with the measurement of the projected image and so the work was called off for the night.   So my revisit to Newton did not happen.  I was greatly disappointed — maybe enough to return there after my dinner/drinks in Winfield tonight?  We shall see.

Let’s close with some photos from Hutchinson.  Just moments after I snapped this photo, the business owner came out of the office screaming and waving and clapping his hands — and I just drove off slowly like he didn’t exist.  Sheesh!

A very nicely preserved example of the Astro Motel chain.  Here are a couple vintage images for comparison:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/romleys/2542209807/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/14696209@N02/4261549758/

Last one — love the blocky shaped letters:

Next post will be a double then on Tuesday night.

Today, we reached our western most point and began the slow crawl back towards home.  Another two weeks to go.  About four days behind schedule.  So much of the southern IL, IN, OH & KY stuff will have to wait til another time.  But I’m doing my darndest to get 98% of my KS & MO stuff done.

More miles and fewer stops today since western KS is far more rural.  More gas stations than neon signs.  But it’s really so pretty that I didn’t feel the pain of only about 3 hours sleep until about 5pm.  Got a giant gas station coffee and forced myself through the bleeriness.  It also helped to have good radio company (Car Talk, Wait Wait, and I’ll admit, Prairie Home Companion).  I was doing alright til I turned off the engine tonight and then I took a four hour nap.  Yikes!  So now it’s 2am as I’m cranking out this stuff.

The dogs got some swimming in at a state park somewhere — forget the name.  It was about 20 degrees cooler and I only ran the AC for a few hours in the afternoon.  Dark clouds for the past few days always seem to be east of us.

I’m not sure about the blogs for the next couple days since I think I’ll be socializing.  That’ll put me two days behind and I don’t see how I’ll ever catch up unless I hit some major rain and can just park & blog.  What shall I do about this?  It’s not so bad catching up on one day with a double blog — but three is just beyond me.

On with today’s photos.  This stone-adorned building in Russell might have been a garage.  Does anyone know its history?

A couple more signs from Russell.  I think this might have been the Kent Motel originally:

I’ve been looking for sunflower imagery and this is the best I’ve come across so far.  The plastic panel looks like it was a spinner.  I bet that part was neon originally:

This is all that remains of this drive-in in Russell:

There was lots of good stuff in Hays:

This sculpture was installed in 1981.  More about the sculptor under #49 at this page:
http://www.haysusa.com/html/the_arts.html

This fun piece is just north of town:

Some curious cows.  The dogs were flippin’:

Lots of small towns today.  From downtown Palco:

From Hill City — the Money Chevrolet Truck Center has a pretty big collection of vintage cars and signs:

Goodland is chock full of interesting stuff for such a small town.  This intact mid-century furniture store has it all:  louver screens over the windows, metal letters, stone, and tile:

Last photo tonight from our western-most point for this trip:  Kanorado.  So named since it sits in Kansas, right next to the Colorado border.  Lots of clouds, trains, and grain elevators today.

It’s frighteningly late here but I’m going to try to push this post through so I’ll be on top of things tomorrow.  I forecast much coffee and gum chewing throughout the day.  Maybe five minute power naps.

Back to the AC situation for a moment.  When I got rolling again yesterday after the repairs, everything seemed fine.  Til I got on the highway.  When I’d hit 50 mph or higher, the coolness would only trickle out a tiny bit.  But when I’d take my foot off the accelerator, the coolness would blast back on.  I called the shop, then hours away, and they’d never heard of such a thing.  I got pretty good throughout the day at going faster than I wanted, backing off the pedal a bit and then I’d have normal air.  I wasn’t going to go to another mechanic and lose any more shooting time.  Though I worried that suddenly I’d be AC-less again.  Today, though — everything, even on the highway is behaving perfectly normal.  Awesome!  Is it possible that whatever was hanging up has righted itself?  Let’s hope!  Today was another 100+ degree scorcher but I think it’s supposed to be cooler for a few days  now.

Alright — let’s get to it.  To make up for the delay, I have a double or triple batch for you.  And that’s even being highly selective.  I took SO many Flickr-worthy, bl0g-worthy photos that it was really hard to narrow thing down.  It was a truly awesome day in Kansas in every way.

Now here’s the last thing you’d expect to see at my blog:  a kitty!  While I was shooting a gas station in Emporia, this guy came up to me meowing in a friendly way.  Despite the frightening expression/pose of this first photo, it was really just a playful sort of bounce as I was focusing on him/her.  I babytalked to him and he continued meowing and stood up against my leg.  I assessed his weight was a little thin but not starving.   Maybe the station’s or a neighbor’s pet.  But not freaky feral.  And with four dogs in the van, there wouldn’t be much I could do.  Except I did go get a giant handful of food for the guy.  At first, he questioned what it was (not normal cat food smell I’m sure) — but then got down to eating it.  I wish him well.

A couple more from Emporia.  A colorful and vacant former Burger Chef:
http://www.agilitynut.com/eateries/bchef.html
(no sign of the original sign)

No, I did not imbibe this time — but find the sign pretty cute:

Couldn’t resist this dramatic shot in Wamego.  I saw lots of these limestone (I think) brick buildings today.  Must be a Kansas thing — just can’t remembering ever seeing this many.

From Zuckey’s Bowl in Manhattan:

A Valentine diner in Junction City:

A few shots from Junction City.  More limestone brick — this time, an Art Deco fire station and municipal building:

This former Burger Chef still has the original lights.  The building is used as a used car lot office now.

From a different used car lot in town:

I found a lot of great stuff in Abilene — both planned and unplanned.  While driving around town, this sign caught my eye from two blocks away (posted at Flickr tonight):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/agilitynut/4890268812/

I recognized it immediately as a sort of twin for a sign at the American Sign Museum.  You don’t see bulb signs like this but very rarely.  Once inside, I was delighted to see this incredible collection of cameras from all eras:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Jeffcoat-Studio-Photography-Museum/85307969769?v=info

It’s a must stop if you’re ever near Abilene — an easy on/off break from I-70. 

Lots of other great signs and buildings in Abilene.  Here’s a pretty one:

And for such a smallish town, Abilene is chock full of museums:
http://skyways.lib.ks.us/museums/
The C.W. Parker Carousel was on my list.  This museum also contains a fantastic collection of telephones (technically, the Museum of Independent Telephony).
http://www.heritagecenterdk.com/museum_of_independent_telephony.html

It was a mere $4 and there were all kinds of other things to see that I didn’t have time for.

At one of my Flickr postings for a motel sign last week, one of the neon signs advertisted “switchboard” and a few folks didn’t know what that meant.  Well, this museum had a big collection of them as well — as well as this “hands-on” machine:

On to Salina which was mind-blowinging cool.  My first time.  How come nobody ever nudged me to visit that city before?  I had about a dozen things on my list and shot about 50 more.  Lots of fun signs.  I thought this one was very fun though obviously fairly modern — but note a jumble of old signs behind it: 

Concrete block + neon = a magical combination:

A hand-painted, no-text-needed sign:

Salina has some gigantic granaries — at least that’s what I think you call them.  Clouds, anyone?:

And this one with a neat neon scaffold sign on top boasting about how many pounds per day:

Neat old streetlights in town.  I’ve never seen anything like them.  Must be translucent-y at night?

Just a tiny sampling of the deco-y goodness waiting for you in Salina:

Since the troops are a bit restless from being confined to the AC-ed van (not so much outdoor running in 100 degree heat), we’ve been having “Bottle Time!” every afternoon.  Since I always have a few D.C. empties on hand, it’s free fun for all.  Nik & Grem flail and chomp away while Grip & Fix bark at them to “stop it!”.  Yes, someday, I’ll learn to take actions shots with my high-tech camera — but maybe it’s better this way — very Balla-esque, no?
http://www.artchive.com/artchive/B/balla/dogleash.jpg.html
Nik & Grem like to strip the labels off and take the caps off — then chew the cap-end to a chomped up mess.

I was told that these are Pink Painted Ladies – new to me:

Everyone says that Iowa and Kansas are so flat and boring.  But I find it just the opposite.  Maybe it’s because we have no sky in NYC and this just the extreme opposite.

And when you think of Kansas, unless you’ve been there extensively or live there, you probably don’t think of lakes. But I passed two nice ones today:  Lake Waconda which was HUGE.  And this one:  Lake Wilson — which the dogs did not let me pass.  Got to a bridge and had to turn around.  The water was crystal clear — very fun for watching little doggie legs kicking.  A good time was had by all.  In addition to the cooling in the water part, much sniffing of, rolling in, and eating of dried bits of crusty crablike animals.

Time to hit the road — caught up finally!!  Shorter blogs to follow.  In fact, just a forewarning, I might take two nights off here in Kansas.  One to visit a friend and another to meet a roadside celebrity.  But I should have more for you tonight.

OK — time to play catchup since I’m a post behind.  I haven’t even started working on today’s photos and I took TONS.  It’s already 11:15 pm but I just bought a gigantic coffee at the 24/7 Travel Store (smallish truck stop-y gas station) here in Russell so I’m feeling pretty ambitious.  But I’d better keep things slide-show-ish and keep the commentary limited so I can get stuff done and get back on track.  I suspect the next post won’t be as chatty as my brains fizzles to mush.

Way back yesterday morning then… stuff to do in Kansas City, KS and keeping an eye out for open, reliable-looking AC repair type places.  So let’s start with a couple signs from KCK:

Named for its location (on Rainbow Blvd.):

I’ve seen a few repurposed Safeway signs on this trip.  I’ll share this one in Mission with you to show off some more of those gorgeous clouds I’ve been witnessing.  I don’t know if this sign will survive the next business incarnation:

And so Mission was to be where I spent about two hours of my morning getting Sparkle’s AC serviced.  I saw a respectable looking Goodyear tire place and it wasn’t five minutes til they pulled her into the bay.  The found a funky hose (I think it was) and there was only 1 gallon of freon when there should have been 3.  So charging that took about an hour.  It was already 90-something at 10am so I really had no choice in the matter.

Normally, this Goodyear has wi-fi which would have been a nice diversion but the modem was down or something.  I did shoot this nice midcentury bank across the street, thinking it was a nice sky blue & white theme.

When I got rolling again, not less than a mile down the road, I saw a sign that said site of new Capitol Federal Savings.  Uh oh.  Looks like that cute little bank might be endangered.  The KC suburbs are rampant with new development — bigger, newer, nicer — the same chant going on everywhere in America.  Shoot ’em now folks!  These things have a way of disappearing.  Praise the business owners for keeping their old signs/buildings and plead at your community meetings and electees that these things be spared.  I’ll keep my lecture short for now.

Sometimes you just can’t tell what’s “real” (old) and what’s retro (fake imitation).  Particularly, as this retro stuff ages it gets really confusing.  This little strip mall in Mission has a stainless-looking wedding cake over the cleaners entrance and some other little stainless embellishments on the side. I sure can’t tell — but maybe a local remembers when this place was built or how long they’ve seen it there.

crappy side view — sun problems:

I’m crazy for this pair of arrow signs at a used car dealer in Olathe:

A truly crappy photo but I’ll include it anyway.  Taken while driving in Lawrence so you get glare and bugs.  But I hope you can make out the neat camo cab — is that wheat or what?  I’ve never seen a truck with this sort of thing before. 

This sign in Lawrence.  I suspect these beer mugs were mass-produced with maybe other beer cos. than Coors as well — but I’ve never seen another one like this:

Just plain pretty.  Looks like it might have either had a name change or a heavy-handed restoration at one point.  From Tecumseh:

We’re in Topeka now — my first time which was very exciting.  And it was just mind-blowingly great in every way.  Great signs & old buildings.  Mid-century buildings all over the place.  For my money, I’d pick Topeka as a vacation destination over Palm Springs if you like mid-century.  Sure, maybe the examples in PS are more extraordinary — but not as plentiful or as heavily tweaked.  If you exclude houses (I usually do!), there are maybe about a dozen or so mcm buildings in PS.  But in Topeka, I bet there are 200!  PS’s mcm buildings get As while Topeka’s might get C+/B-.  But I bet the hotels are a heckuva lot cheaper, too.  And off the top of my head, I’m not remembering any neon signs or Art Deco in PS either.  Topeka’s got other fun raggedy, weird stuff, too, that PS doesn’t have.  Hands down, Topeka’s the winner in my book!

Here are just a few highlights (more at last night’s Flickr post).  A two-fer:  dogs and rustiness.  Yes, the text part of the sign must have been a lot more exciting in its prime.  I’d love to see a vintage photo of this one!

A modern sign — but so worthy of including here.  I tried to place/crop the clouds so it looked like rocket exhaust for you:

Two magnificent specimens at Autos Inc.:

It’s been awhile since I posted any parking garage signs.  And Topeka has several nice ones.  Can someone please get me a grant or a book deal so I can just travel the country and shoot parking signs exclusively?  Only half kidding.

A study in contrasts.  Good Lord — that’s more awnings than I’ve ever seen in one place!:

Let’s close this one out with a couple more signs from Topeka.  I’m heading off to work on today’s stuff now.  Stay tuned…

Cooler inside the van that is.  Outside was just awful — hotter than ever on this trip.  Bank clocks ranged throughout the day from 103-105 for most of the day.  One even read 112.  By 9pm, it had only cooled down to 90.  More of the same expected for the next two days.  Got the A/C fixed this morning — mostly.  But since it’s 1:30am now (got started late tonight), I’m gonna cut myself some slack and do the official post from today either tomorrow morning or tomorrow night.  I’ve got loads of photos to insert and that project is just too overwhelming for me at the moment.  All is well — stay tuned.

So, around 10am, we’d had enough and I turned on the A/C.  Lots of fans blowing but nothing cold coming out. And so it was.  I tried to find a garage but they would all say things like “maybe this afternoon”.  So we plugged along.  It broke 100 degrees which means it was probably 110 in the van.  I think tomorrow I’ll have better luck finding a not-so-backed-up mechanic in Lawrence or Topeka so we can get this thing fixed.  The AC has been working so great throughout this trip.  You really miss it when it’s not there — especially when you’re driving about 13 hours per day.  I did a little poking at Google and it seems air conditioning didn’t really become standard until the 1960s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_conditioning

At one point in the afternoon, I thought I had a brainstorm. I bought a giant bag of ice for $2 and some garbage bags.  I filled up/spread out the ice in a bag for the dogs thinking they would really like to lay on that to stay cool.  But everyone seemed averse to this crunchy, weird thing.  Eventually, Nik figured out the benefit when I moved it to the front seat:

When I pulled in to reshoot one of my favorite mid-century churches, I spotted it from a distance:  a hose!  Fantastic!  Nobody around so I took the liberty of giving everybody a good long douse.  I even doused my head for awhile.  Then a couple stops later to see the giant Jesus statue, there was a little pond right there for the kids to swim in.  Even an atheist like myself found these “the Lord will provide” events pretty remarkable.

This afternoon seemed like an eternity but I just kept banging through the KS stuff and eventually moved across the border to Kansas. It’s been a long, exhausting day for all of us — but I won’t neglect my homework.  Lots of photos for ya.

Unless otherwise mentioned, everything’s from Kansas City, MO where we spent 95% of the day.  This one’s showing its age — a most unusual name:

a great used car lot sign:

Another used car lot — multiple views of this great place.  The pole sign in front.  Note the sweet drop lights above it:

The same drop lights on top of the office (close-up below).  And odd shape — maybe completely round originally and the back part added later?  Note the strands of bulbs all over the place.  This place must be quite stunning at night.

Love the literal-ness of this sign:

A couple of odd storefronts:

An art deco delight detail — with some twists.  The police camera — and the crane in the background.  Times sure have changed.

Nice contrasting brick for this sign — which must’ve been repurposed from a previous business.  KC-ers — do you have the scoop on this one?

Wonderful towering bank sign.  Can’t remember the last time, if ever, I saw a bank sign this big.  Usually, this style is reserved for shopping centers and the like.  It was a mere 91 here.  I think it peaked around 2pm and this was maybe noon.

Another mammoth sign (see buckets at the bottom for scale).  It probably looked a heckuva lot nicer once upon a time:

OK — we’ve moved into Kansas City, KS now.  It must be confusing sometimes mixing up the cities/states.  The KS side is remarkably poorer.  I don’t think Texarkana TX vs. OK is that much of a noticeable shift in economics.  But I guess this Missouri River is a bigger separator.

Next door to the Crown Rug is this crinkled-up sign for my rusty crusty fans:

Still in KS City, KS — love this advertising.  Who knew there were so many different kinds of wigs? (note to newbies to my blog – you can click on the photos for bigger sizes)

Near the Kansas Speedway — the T-Rex Cafe was on my list — but I had to steel myself since it’s in a MALL!  I stay far away from those places but sometimes, you have no  choice.  The outside of the place was intriguing and revolting in an overly commercial way but I gave it a go.  I do love dinosaurs. 

But once I was inside, I really got in the spirit.   There’s this animatronic, rubbery necked guy to greet you right when you go in:

To the left is an awesome bar with a giant squid and jellyfish (?) lights and fish tanks:

Up the stairs on the way to the bathroom, I passed the Ice Cave:

 

Regular folks having dinner amidst the dinos.  It’s a little too family-oriented for me.  I’m not that into children — esp. on the rare times that I eat at a restaurant.  Not that I would have on this trip.  OK, so I don’t like kids (actually, they’re okay, just not crazy about them) and I don’t believe in God.  Have I lost have my blog audience now?

Damn!  I missed the wooly mammoths!
http://www.kansastravel.org/kansascitykansas/trexcafe.htm

On to Bonner Springs where I’m calling it a night.  I went to this place to see & shoot a giant chicken.  It was closed but luckily the chicken was in the yard so I still got my photo.  Little did I know that the place had lots of mcm (mid-century modern) touches — the cool sign:

The Farmers’ Memorial dome:

The museum itself:

OK — one more for you sign lovers — also from Bonner Springs.  The building itself is not that special but this sign is a winner:

Here’s hoping for a cooler day tomorrow!

It was over 100 degrees, again, today.  We’re all hanging in.  Forecast for tomorrow is more of the same.  The weather’s supposed to change on Friday — 20 degrees cooler and rain.  So I’d better shoot as fast as I can.  If I do run into crappy weather, I’ll consider it a blessing and pull over and sleep.

Otherwise, nothing noteworthy.  I’d hoped to bang through all the KC stops in one big push.  But only got through about half.  Road construction and detours east of Independence didn’t help either.  So tomorrow, I should be able to wrap it up and start on the Kansas chunk.  I’ve allotted four days to cover that state’s stops — not enough I’m sure.  Little blue circles all over that map in the atlas.  And a hefty one-inch thick stack of printed maps.

Let’s move on to today’s offerings.  We dipped our toes into Kansas a couple times today for a few things.  Here’s one from Leavenworth.  Of course, I’m a huge mid-century modern fan but, really, what were they thinking here?

Not to be confused with the Best Western chain…  This one in Independence, MO:

Several more from Independence.  A little bit of this and a little bit of that in the Sterling Lanes sign (near Sterling Ave.).  Google actually calls this Sugar Creek, MO.

I was glad to see the “winking man” signs were still there.  There’s this one and another one next door at the used car lot.  Both building and lot have been abandoned for years.  Any KC-ers know the original name of this dealership?  Did this character have a name?  I’ve never seen these plastic ball signs used in repetition like this before.

I posted a close-up of the Save Gas sign but here’s another gratuitous shot just to show you more incredible clouds.  The gas station’s been closed for awhile apparently.  I worry what will become of this sign.  Lots of new development all over the place.

I can’t remember what was here before Bob’s Cafe (help, anyone?) but they’ve done a nice job of repurposing the sign:

A cute plastic sign from Raytown:

I posted the Fun House Pizza sign in Raytown over at Flickr tonight.  Here’s another example of a C-152 Lectra sign.   Bonus bulb arrow and concrete block.  These C-152 Lectra signs were quite mesmerizing at night.  Here’s a video of the Fun House sign:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-m4xcocevI

A couple shots from Kansas City proper (more tomorrow).  Some swirly Art Deco detail:

And last one for the day — I can’t tell if this sign is a new retro build — or a repurposed sign.  It looks sooo familiar but so many signs used this or a similar design.  You’d think Dave’s could have added neon to the mid-section.  The sign looks so odd and half-assed this way.

My god it was hot today.  Holy cow!  It had to be more than 100.  The only bank clock I saw was at 6pm and it read 99 degrees.  It’s not cooling off much more tonight either.  In the late afternoon, I found some water for the dogs to romp in.  Right by Terrible’s Casino in St. Joseph.  The Missouri River was really moving quickly and strongly so I was careful just how far I threw the ball for Nik and the treats for the girls so nobody got swept away.

The purpose of my venture over to the casino was not to gamble — but to shoot this guy who’s not as big as the one in Osceola, IA but still nice — especially for a modern sign:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/agilitynut/3868887677/

I knocked out the St. Joseph stuff today and thought I’d stick around to see if the  Pony Express or the Boudreaux’s bucket signs were lit at night.  Apparently not or I got there too late (11pm).  Tomorrow, it’ll be all about Kansas City — and if I really hustle, might move on to Kansas state.

The weather was so intensely hot and with all that city traffic, I started to worry what this might be doing to Sparkle.  So I’d turn off the A/C for awhile to give her a break.  When the dogs started panting and looking miserable, I’d turn the air back on.  Their comfort is way more important than mine.

Lots more signs today – hope you don’t mind.  The food has been pretty mundane.  I did splurge on a peanut parfait (ice cream) at the Dairy Barn in Wathena, KS this afternoon to treat myself for a superhuman effort today.  Man, was it good!  Sorry, no photo of it though — I just wasn’t thinking straight at the time.

The day started off crappy and rainy.  But at least my stops were spread pretty far apart and the grey photos are limited.  I checked on the giant pecan in Sumner.  It’s fine but some weeds are growing up around it.  The store itself looks like it’s been closed for awhile.  These characters are known as Wham (the hammer) and Petey (the pecan):

The movie theatre in Brunswick.  Brand new sidewalk and handicapped access but no attention to the theatre itself:

Another depressing theatre in Carrollton:

Some signs — this is from Chillicothe:

which is evidently home to sliced bread — who knew!

A couple photos from little Stanberry — this a Valentine diner like this one:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/roadsidenut/3872698430/

and this sign (clock works) which stands next to an ATM machine.  I assume there must’ve been a small bank building there once:

A few photos from Maryville.  This must’ve advertised for a real estate office or mobile home seller:

A chiropractor’s office:

and a weathervane place:
http://www.robbinslightning.com/weather_vanes.php

A hand painted (plywood I think) from Savannah:

Great spiral-y poles (what would you call these?) from Belt Alignment & Frame in St. Joseph:

a ghost sign from St. Joseph:

and lastly, another from St. Joseph.  No idea what this gigunda arrow advertised for originally but I really like the shape of it.  Must’ve had neon: