stuck between stations

Blue Hour Neon

I noticed this sign the other day (during daylight hours). As night fell, I remembered the thing and called up the store to see if they would be lighting 'er up. Yes. So ran out and tried a few things: angles, focal length, and aspect ratios.

An aside: I had to repeatedly stand in the street between waves of cars, not smart, really: folks will simply run you down (even if they see you in the gloaming). That ambulance, in the second image, could have been for yours truly, truly.

Neon during the blue hour: an unbeatable combination. Plus: the waxing gibbous moon was a few days away of being full. It was already too high to work into a shot with a normal or longer lens, which would have made it more of a presence.

The milk run from Juneau to Seattle across Southeast Alaska

everyone's heard of this, right? per ap article of apr 8, 2026:

Geological textures from California to Nevada

A visit to the Blue Swallow Motel in Tucumcari, New Mexico.  I’d called our hosts, the Muellers, to inform them of our late arrival on the night of October 8, 2011.  Outdoing Motel 6 by quite a bit, they “left the light on” for us–in this case their iconic neon sign.  A note was on the door; they’d retired for the evening but our key was in the door of #15. 

We’d never stayed there, having stayed in the nearby Palomino in the past.  Beyond the sign, I didn’t know what to expect at the Blue Swallow but it turned out to be an experience in time travel.  It’s been 4 years since we stayed there; I think they’ve developed a neighboring gas station into a retro exhibit.  I know they’ve acquired another automotive mascot, a 1957 Hudson, to keep the one pictured (a 1951 Pontiac called The Chief) company.

An F5 twister with winds of 261 mph roared into La Plata on April 28, 2002, and left a 64-mile path of destruction across four counties.

When it was over, it entered the record books as the worst tornado in Maryland’s history.