With endless things to blog about and 15-20 posts in progress at any given time, how do I end up with these lonnnngggg stretches without posting? Easy guess… I’m doing the thangs I’m writing about 😁. But I know what would help, more time on the weekend. Hear me out. A third day would be a wonderful addition to the experiment we call the weekend. The two day version has been tested long enough. It’s time to test a new hypothesis e.g. a 3-day or 4-day weekend leads to a more productive 3-day or 4-day work week. I volunteer to be the subject for a case study or the lead researcher in an ethnographic study. Alas, this post is about signs, not about weekends, or the article Waiting for the Weekend, or the book Waiting for the Weekend (though both are good reads), or needing a longer weekend, or wishing the weekend would never end, or ruminations on why weekends deserve more time than weekdays. I may have a thesis running through my head about weekends.

In outdoor recreation, travel, tourism, etc., there are a plethora of systems, structures, approaches, frameworks, and so on and so forth, for managing behaviours to minimize negative impacts to natural resources, improve efficiency, facilitate the flow of people, increase visitor satisfaction, and so on. I’ll just simply say that from a visitor/user management perspective, signs are critical, and typically the soft approach to handling how people interact with managed natural and cultural areas. Soft approaches are the preferred alternative to banning visitors from such spaces. Signs may be informational, interpretive, way finding, cautionary, emergency, prophetic, and more.

I’ve had this post rolling around in my head for years because I take photos of signs all the time. I wonder if other people notice them and pay attention or notice and ignore them, especially the ones that are suggesting actions they don’t like since “rules are for fools” as Jennetta often reminds me when we’re hiking and a hiker with a dog passes the “no dogs allowed” signs. Signs are all over, we acknowledge, interpret, and follow them how we will.

Here are some of the signs that have captured my attention in the last few years (and a few that are way older because I love them). Warning: My weekend isn’t long enough to caption all of these photos, so if something (or some things) peaks your interest, feel free to email, text, snail mail, or call to ask me about it/them. Note: these photos may be less than 20 percent of the photos of signs I’ve taken in the last five years. There may be a part 2 to this post some time in the future… when I have 7-day weekends.

As I wrap up this post about signs, something tells me that I possibly take too many photos and eat too much popcorn. Maybe. Perhaps. Are you wondering about the signs indicating those possibilities? There are no photos. Uh gone!

I’m posting ‘Stealing Love’ for two reasons: I like the tune. And I finished writing the post while listening to vintage reggae. This tune is not a sign 😁.