Things that caught your eye while traveling

[Krisfer_the_Cat]

Drving through Idaho last month I saw painted on the side of a white utility truck a sign for a roofing company. At the bottom of the sign it said “ROOF OLING”. Now I have no idea what roof oling is but apparently there’s a market for it in rural Idaho!

Idaho dopers help me out on this one: Somewhere between Burley and Mountain Home there’s a billboard that said something about virginity. I thought it was really wierd at the time but I was pressed for time to be able to stop and take a closer look!

[Colophon]

@Suburban Plankton

Some years ago I was hiking in Yosemite National Park. At one point, our trail went right past the top on one of the waterfalls. You could walk out on a large, flat rock outcropping so that you were standing just a few feet from the edge of the fall, which is a couple hundred feet high.

Just past the railing set in the rock is a warning sign. Now, this being the litigious country that it is, I was not surprised. After all, if there wasn’t a sign to warn us to keep out of the water, we’d have people dropping like flies.

But instead of “Danger, unsafe water”, or “Keep out: Extrame Danger”, or some other such warning, this sign had a very simple message:

“Keep out of the water, or you will die.”

This is one of the things I loved about Victoria Falls - on the Zambian side at least, there’s no railing or anything to keep you out of the water, just feet from the lip of the biggest waterfall you ever saw (one mile wide, almost 400 feet high). Even more impressively, the local show-offs were swimming from island to island just yards upstream from the precipice, setting off at an angle upstream so that the rushing water carried them to tiny rocks midstream :eek: Look atthis pic to see how crazy that is. I have some photos of my own of the boys doing this but they’re not online.

[Daftbugger]

I saw a sign in India that said ‘A Ninney, don’t pee here’ I have a picture somewhere

[Colophon]

Here’s a pic I found of some other nutters at Victoria Falls. That’s 400 feet over that edge, into a cauldron of white water. Fancy a swim?

[marky33]

Very large, colourful graffitti (in English) on a bench in Tartu, Estonia: “People + Shit = Flowers”

[FisherQueen]

I was driving across country when I saw a sign that said “Welcome to the Limberlost.”

I’d read “A Girl of the Limberlost” over and over again as a child, but I’d always assumed the place was fictional. It was like suddenly finding yourself driving through Narnia, or Oz.

[Ethilrist]

There’s a freeway onramp in a semi-industrial part of San Francisco that has a sharp turn in it. There’s a machine shop on the inside of that turn, and the people that work there apparently got tired of having to help people who didn’t make the turn because there’s a piece of corrugated sheet metal stuck on a post that reads “DAMMIT SLOW DOWN!”

[Balle_M]

@KRC

OK, another funny sign: 9 years ago my father and I were in Eastern Kentucky and we saw a sign that read “Bypass Church of God.” I guess Bypass was the name of the town but we thought it was funny enough that we stopped to look and we noticed the church had outdoor toilets. That was not terribly unusual–in some areas of the country I’ve seen churches and homes that have old fashioned outdoor latrines. But this one was a three stall deal. One door read “Ladies,” another read “Gentlemen,” and another read “Trash.”

Yeah, it probably just meant the “Trash” stall was the place to toss the garbage, but we laughed about it.

There is a sign in the thriving metropolis of Lookout, WV proclaiming, “Lookout Baptist Church.”

Personally, I think they’re taking these mandatory warnings a bit too far.

[calm_kiwi]

Toilets. Pretty much anywhere you go they are different from home and some of them don’t inspire going.

[JohnBckWLD]

@Phlosphr

Phoenix AZ has some of the most spectacular thunder storms I have ever seen…and in it’s trail were 8…count them 8 - BEAUTIFUL! Rainbows. With extremely brightcolors. And of course I had no camera.

You could’ve ran in to the local Walgreens and bought a disposable camera and got a rainbow picture like this. It’s too bad they don’t photograph as well as what one sees with the naked eye.

Another thing about Arizona, walking through their Arboretum (the Bailey one to be exact) is like being on a different planet - where you expect to see alien life forms that resemble the Roadrunner and Wyle E Coyote.
Other things I’ve noticed:
Almost everywhere in the world, pedestrians actually wait for the walk signal to turn green before crossing.
The most beautiful people in the world can be found in Spain
The diesel fumes in Lima, Peru would suffocate an elephant
London as far too many American fast-food establishments, but I really like those brass trays you place your pint on.
The rail system in Germany works on the honor system
Carribean waters are infested with dolphins - even 10 miles off shore
Though alot of places need them, with the exception of NY, there’s *no city * I’ve ever been to that has street signs like these or these.

[Ludovic]

In the middle of Virginia on I-95, on the west side of the road, there is a 3-story high Purina animal food storage silo, with the Purina sign painted clearly on the side of it. It’s the most memorable landmark between DC and South of the Border :eek: