Signs of the Times

Biking across the country exposes one to a lot of road signs - some that, if read literally, would just be baffling.  Today we crossed over into Michigan, and were greeted with more than a dozen signs. 

 Zooming in on the individual signs shows: a Welcome to Michigan sign, a welcome to county sign, a right turn sign, a turn speed limit sign, an ATV trail sign, a snowmobile right of way sign, an Adopt-a-Highway sign, a road number sign, two right-turn signs at the turn, a road name sign, and some kind of caution sign facing the other way! 

Today we saw some other pretty funny ones.  At a convenience store, there was one saying that all customers entering the store had to remove helmets.  I thought they were concerned about cyclists and took my helmet off, but the clerk clarified that the problem was snowmobilers and ATV'ers who would come into establishments fully clothed with helmet masks on and rob stores and banks.  I had to laugh at a dry cleaning factory in Caspian, MI with the door open and a sign saying that the door was not to be left open during working hours!

Leaving Caspian, we found a bike trail with the following sign announcing an upcoming hill.

But what the heck does it mean?  Is it a 3000' high climb or a descent, or does the 3000' have something to do with the horizontal distance?  It turns out it was a climb that was only about 200' up, but the 3000' was roughly the distance along the trail.  Back in Glen Ullin, ND, we got a chuckle out of this sign:

And then we were pretty intimidated when we saw this one back in eastern Washington:

We figured that the landowner probably wouldn't be very amused if the name of our car that we were driving very fast was "SLOW".  And lastly, I was just amazed with this one:

It's fine that this catholic church makes their members feel guilty, but now they're trying to make the non-believers feel guilty too!