I say a little ospreyer for you: The osprey nest in the pineapple sign of Lake Placid, Florida

Run children, run!

A recent roadtrip to the pretty little south central Florida town of Lake Placid yielded us a two-fer: an abandoned, decaying roadside sign and business, and a wonder of nature. On top of the pineapple-shaped sign in front of a decommissioned citrus stand along busy Route 27 sits a large osprey nest with a rather angry mother protecting her young. At first we didn't notice the nest and thought this was just a cool, abandoned place, so beautifully melancholy Old Florida, but after getting out to walk around and get a closer look, a lot of loud squawking was heard. It was then we noticed a large hawk-like bird right in the top. The closer we got, the more distressed she acted until she flew off and began circling and crying. This was something I hadn't seen before, I thought to myself, and for a minute I wondered if I should be heading to a phone booth for protection, like Tippi Hedren in "The Birds". We would have lingered longer to get more pictures but moved on after a minute because the poor bird really did seem distressed. To stay any longer would have seemed, well, hawkward.

Strike up the abandoned: Awesome photography by Noel Kerns

These pictures are all copyright Noel Kerns. Aren't they something?

I've always found abandoned places compelling and I started taking pictures of them back when I was a college student. On our trips down secondary roads, we've seen a lot of these places -- melancholy reminders of what used to be  -- and I'm fascinated at how long some of these sad places stick around, rotting away year after year (check out some we've blogged about here). Lots of other people like to take pictures of these kinds of places, but very few have the talent and skill of a Mr. Noel Kerns, a Dallas-based photographer who mostly focuses on Texas ghost towns, decommissioned military bases and old gas stations, cafes and roadside dwellings, all photographed at night under a full moon. Just finding these places takes skill and time, but then he waits until the perfect evening and lights his subjects in an incredibly artistic and surreal way, giving the images a dreamlike quality he calls "light painting". He's got a book out, "Nightwatch - Painting with Light" and a really extensive Flickr sight. Keep up the good work, Mr. Kerns, and long live decay.

Running on empty: Some abandoned gas stations seen along the way

There's something beautiful and melancholy about a once-thriving gas station left to rot among the weeds, like so many bald tires, its pumps forever reflecting the prices of the day they died. That's oil, folks.

Lactose Intolerant: Rhode Island's Abandoned Milk Can Building

The thriving Rustic Drive-In is across the street.

And just down the road is Coffee & Cream, home of the giant travel mug.

The Milk Can's story is a well-intentioned but sad one. The building dates back to 1929 and is a prime example of that era's buildings-shaped-like-things roadside architecture. It went out of business in 1968 and sat vacant until the state wanted to use the land it was on for a highway exit ramp in the 1980s. Stanley Surtel Jr. and his father-in-law Frank D'Andrea bought the structure for $1,100 and had it moved from its original Lincoln, Rhode Island location to a new spot a mile down the road on Route 146 in North Smithfield. Almost immediately, the new owners encountered problems. It took preservationists and highway officials 17 months to devise a way to move the building without damaging it. Then regulations for installing a septic system added another delay. Surtel and D'Andrea put $50,000 into restoration when the state informed them the ground water on the new location was horribly contaminated with 600 times the allowable amount of benzine. Never reopened, the structure has been sitting on that same plot since 1991.

As much as I love beautifully restored or original old places, abandoned ones have a special eccentric quality all their own. Poignant, sad, ironic, spooky, or just plain weird... it's all good.

The Milk Can is on a particularly fertile stretch of Route 146. The spectacular Rustic Drive-In is across the street and is the rarest of rare roadside attractions: a thriving drive-in movie theater showing first-run fare like the new Harry Potter movie and selling out. And just down the road, a newer structure, the Coffee and Cream, is a recent establishment with the feel of an old time place but with a contemporary spin: a giant travel mug out front. But the Milk Can is the cream of the crop in this trifecta of retro Rhody road sites. It's an udder delight.