They appear further on. Some years I see a tree or a branch turning as early as the the last week in July, but always by the first week in August. That stretch of County Road 480 from the Crossroads to Negaunee has never let me down as the first place to see color changes. It was more early adolescent age fun to wrestle in the leaf piles, respective of gender diversity. The romance is gone.
Warning signs take on a serious meaning.
But, in August, with the leaves going to color, it's a different ball game. I don't know M-DOT personnel or perspective very well, but what I have gleaned tells me that surely humor is not the motivating force in permitting that sign to remain there in August. Even in the U.P. things are not that Siberian. Several of us have considered a class action suit against M-DOT for permitting patently silly and misleading signs to line our highways but we have temporarily abandoned the idea for more profitable pursuits. I was thinking recently of the early 1950s in Wilmington, Delaware, in a conference room on the second floor of the Hotel Dupont when former President Harry Truman, just out of office, went around the room, asking each of us what we were doing in the Democratic Party's state campaign.