Slap my face and call me silly, but we’re about to do it again.

Take the dogs to the gulf, that is.

Puppies Sadie and Lucy really got into the surf last spring. That is, after they realized the Gulf of Mexico wasn’t a tongue-flapping monster out to eat them.

Now they’re one year old, and we’re going to get them salty once more.

As much fun as it is, anyone who travels with animals knows the challenge. Consider dining. You can’t just leave them in a heat-trapping car while you chill inside.

So it was on our last day in Galveston that weekend. We got food with the intent of finding a picnic table. Surely one was to be found in all of that great port city.

We drove and drove. One picnic table that otherwise would have borne promise instead was bearing a slumbering street person.

Galveston probably has 100 or more picnic tables in pleasant settings. They just didn’t happen to be on our path. We even asked a few merchants for directions.

We ended up eating at an unpleasantly noisy road-side stop 20 miles north of town.

If only we had a sign. The U.S. Forest Service knows what it is doing in availing signs for where visitors can pop a cooler and sit a spell. Why don’t cities? Why doesn’t Waco?

Recently the federal government announced a major initiative to put up informational signs in the nation’s capital complex. Though pamphlets and guides are readily available, a study found that signs were lacking to guide all those millions of yearly visitors.

Many people, for instance, had no idea what or where the new World War II Memorial is.

Listen and learn, Waco. You are always talking about attracting visitors off the interstate. But if they oblige, what will they find besides the convenience stores and fast-food joints screaming corporate names?

As Burma Shave is my witness, you cannot overstate the importance of a sign. We’re not talking about billboards, necessarily. We’re talking about a conscious effort to inform people that something special is near.

That day in Galveston, a sign signifying a picnic table would have been mighty special. The dogs would have licked you all over for one.

No matter how many options Galveston might have had, we ended up picnicking elsewhere. How were we to know where they were?

Waco has had occasional bursts of cognition about this. It installed signs a few years ago pointing the way to the Cameron Park Zoo. Those signs are a mite faded these days, while the zoo, which keeps growing, keeps gaining crowd appeal.

Waco recently addressed the stepsister status of Cameron Park East by changing its name to Brazos Park East. What’s the difference, however, if no one knows of its existence?

Waco has many assets worth advertising in informative ways; multiple look-outs over the cliffs, a vantage point on the east side that shows the limestone layers from a river level. At various points (depending on flood tides) it’s had a dock. I’ve suggested in this space that for the price of a sign and a pun, “Pier at the Cliffs,” Waco would have an attraction.

I’m telling you, people. If you give it a name and plant a sign in the ground, people will come. Oh, and put some picnic tables nearby.

Signs like these are the information equivalent of sidewalks. They’re a community telling people it’s OK to come out and play. Get out of the car. Stretch your varicose veins. Fresh air provided, free of charge.

Or, visitors can get their air out of a hose for 50 cents along the interstate as they drive through, desperate for a place to pop a cooler.

John Young’s column appears Thursday and Sunday. E-mail: jyoung@wacotrib.com.