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.

Long live decay

My blogging friend Jeffery Blackwell at Rubber@Road recently posted some beautiful pictures he shot of a rotting Mercury which reminded me of how much I love pictures of things in a state of decay. Without even trying, once gleaming signs and objects of hope and opulence are now symbols of pity, melancholy and irony. One man's eyesore is another's photo op.

Pump and Circumstance: Bisbee, Arizona's Indian Motorcycle building

Bisbee, Arizona sits 90 miles southeast of Tucson in the Mule Mountains on the Mexican border and is a very cool place. It was a huge mining town in the early 1900s and had the largest population between San Francisco and St. Louis at that time. Bisbee continued to be a mining community until the 1970s but today it is mostly known as a funky and free-spirited artist community. You could spends days walking around taking pictures of all the cool old Victorian buildings and their colorful inhabitants and their pursuits, the most spectacular of which is the Shady Dell vintage travel trailer park, which I'll get to in a future post.

We got onto a quiet avenue somewhat ironically called Main Street that led us to some beautifully melancholy street scenery. Several posts are needed to do it all justice, so here's the first one. We spotted an abandoned-looking (save for a satellite dish) red brick building with a gorgeous Indian Motorcycle sign painted on its exterior. Out front were two old Texaco pumps and a 1940s yellow Chrysler taxi cab, all just sitting there for the benefit of no one in particular. I love places like this, seeming caught in a time vacuum while the rest of the world hurries by.