While I Was Away

Quite honestly, I didn’t expect it would take this long for me to begin posting again. I had grand plans of getting together a lot of my summertime signs and posting, but that somehow never materialized. I could come up with some excuses, but as we all know, excuses are tiresome and never matter much in the end, so moving on from there, I might as well share where I’ve been over the summer and fall.

The short answer: not that many places. But, wherever I could, I tried to make the effort to find some new things and new spots. For instance, this fall, we were summoned to the wedding of my cousin in the North Shore of Massachusetts. Due to time constraints, any Boston sign-gathering was out of the question, but we had time enough on the return trip to hit up some places I had researched. My eye fell upon a stretch of U.S. 5 just west of Hartford in the town on Newington. There were several classics along this stretch, the first of which (the Siesta Motel) I couldn’t get to because of construction. I was a bit disappointed, but there was no reason to look back, as I came upon a bowling alley that had a sign I didn’t even know about.

I’ve shared my frustration with the lack of great old Bowling Alley signs in my area, so I found this one irresistible. I had just bought my Pentax 15mm f/4 and was itching to get good use out of it. I was amazed at the color results of the lens, even more so at my next stop, which was right next door at the Maple Motel:

The colors were so vivid, even compared to the shots I took with my other lenses, like so:

Mind you, the subject is all that matters. Further down the road, I came upon the USA Motel, which was a much smaller sign than I figured, and had a whole bunch of modern, plastic stuff hanging below it. However, it was very easily accessible, and it wasn’t that hard to get a shot that captured only the good bits:

But none of these were what I was after in the first place. I had been admiring shots of the Olympia Diner for some time now, and it seemed foolish to let it pass by once again, even though it’s a landmark and not likely to go missing anytime soon. Fortunately, the light was perfect, and all was right with the world:

It was a great little excursion, and a reminder of how fun a little side trip can be.