It's a gas baby: The Neon Boneyard of Las Vegas, Nevada

These photos have an annoying but necessary watermark on them because the Neon Museum only allows photos for personal use. They charge for commercial use so they can raise money to keep restoring the signs.

 This nice lady lead the tour we took back in 2008.

As fans of both roadside stuff and decay, the Las Vegas Neon Museum's Neon Boneyard is just about the coolest place we've ever seen, even when it's 100 degrees outside. As Vegas's casinos and businesses get torn down to build even bigger, more up to date places where you can lose your kids' college fund, the Neon Museum's earnest preservationists have arranged to have the classic old signs dragged to an area on the outskirts of town. And thank God, for these signs are history. The Boneyard spreads over two acres and contains over 150 donated and rescued signs dating from the 1930's up until today. It's a surreal experience to take the tour, a real bargain at $18, and led by local Vegas sign historians/volunteers. The Museum is lovingly restoring the signs and putting them up around Las Vegas as historical goodwill ambassadors reminding visitors of Sin City's glorious past. They look fantastic restored but I find them even more amazing in their Boneyard state of ruin. The irony is overwhelming. Something that was once so glittery, happy, huge and spectacular is now rusted, busted, and tapped out. A trip to Vegas is simply not complete without a trip to the Boneyard. The Neon Museum uses the tour fee to keep on restoring the signs so visit them, please. Here's their website: http://www.neonmuseum.org/tour-info

It's a gas: Some neon signs seen along the way

A neon sign is a wonder to behold. Its retro-futuristic glow and buzz give me a warm feeling every time I see it, and there is real artistry involved with the bending of tubes into intricate patterns and breezy typography. I'm especially intrigued with old, dilapidated neon signs — those once-gleaming marvels of art, science and commerce, left to rot like so much inert gas. Here's looking at you, neon...what glows around comes around.

Cowboy up: West Wendover, Nevada's Wendover Will

This awesome photo of Will at night was shot by Dave Beedon.

This is Will in front of the Stateline casino, circa 1960. The photo comes from the great website Frank Busca's Route40.net .

Here's Will's brother, Vegas Vic.

In 1952, a Mr. William Smith opened a casino in the small northern Nevada-Utah border town of West Wendover called the Stateline. He had the good taste to commission a Mr. Pat Denner, the designer of Las Vegas' famous Vegas Vic neon cowboy, to adorn his gambling parlor with a similar cowpuncher to give everybody a friendly "Howdy, pardners!" as they drove by and nudge them in the direction of his wagering temple. And thus Wendover Will, named for both the town and Mr. Smith, was created, and Mr. Denner made him an even taller galoot (63 feet) than his older brother, earning him the distinction of the World's Largest Mechanical Cowboy from the Guinness Book. Both of Will's arms waved, his eye winked, his cigarette flicked, and his 1,184 feet of neon tubing flashed day in and day out until 2002, when the Stateline changed ownership and Will was kindly donated to the town, who made him their good-Will ambassador and moved him to an even better location and gave him a lavish restoration. His white hat, yellow bandanna, red shirt, Levis, cowboy boots, and six-gun gleamed in the hot midday Nevada sun when we passed through town last spring, but, alas, we weren't able to stick around and see him all lit up and in motion after dark. If anyone out there has a video of Will at night, we'd love to add it here.

It's encouraging when a treasure like Will is recognized for the neon-tastic icon he is and a town revels in his awesomeness. Kudos to West Wendover for appreciating where there's a Will, there's a he-went-that-a-way. Happy trails to you.

Notable neon of the week: Provincetown, Massachusetts' Lobster Pot

Provincetown, Massachusetts is a beautiful and funky art community that rests on the tip of scenic Cape Cod. My family vacationed there often when I was growing up, and while we never dined at the Lobster Pot restaurant on Commercial Street, its friendly neon lobster was always a landmark to me. After not visiting for many years, I went back to P-town recently and was delighted to see the sign is still there, exactly as it was when I was a kid. And we still didn't dine there.

Tripping the lights fantastic: New York City neon

The trend these days in well-lit places like Times Square and the Las Vegas Strip seems to be toward big screen projection signs and less about old-fashioned neon, but give me the bent gaseous tubes any day. Luckily, there's still plenty of neon to be admired and gawked at in the Big Apple. We were in New York for a couple of days and I couldn't get enough of the bright lights just within a block or two of our mid-Manhattan hotel. They barely scratch the surface of all the great neon New York has to offer that you could spend weeks photographing. To me there are no bad neon signs. I love them all... the perfectly maintained ones, all bright and glowy; the older ones beginning to fade with age; and the sad ones with letters burned out pining for their glory days. Start spreading the news.