Morning: Started off the day down in Homestead, at the hotel
Looking West, down the Mon
Looking East; you can see the Homestead High-Level Bridge in the background and a Gantry Crane from the old Homestead Works in the foreground. I think it’s pretty amazing that 20 years ago I was down here surveying the steel mill with Beirwerth, Barton, and Burr and today it’s this huge shopping/entertainment complex.
The Mon: a tourist attraction? Who would have thunk it?
Saturday morning began with breakfast at Eat & Park with Dad; I guess the strangest thing about the meal that I haven’t shared in other conversations was that Dad had nothing, zip, zilch, nada, to drink with his meal. To me, who dings waiters/waitresses when the water isn’t refilled as needed, this seemed really weird…I don’t think I could eat a meal without drinking anything.
Made our first stop for sports swag before the museum. Collected a Nittany Lion jersey for Matthew (picture forthcoming), some Steeler fleece pajama pants and a nice sweatshirt for Christopher and a Penguin Winter Classic t-shirt and a Pouncey jersey for Dad.
Christopher asked to return to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, so, that was the plan once it opened.
Christopher was very clear; let’s skip the Roman and Greek architecture that we did last time and go straight to the good stuff. So, off we went, walked right through the first exhibit and onto the crystals and rocks.
this one is pat of a display that is backlit from behind
these are fluorescent
and this one I was told to take a picture of…
Rocks and Crystals done; off to the Dinos. Don’t think we spent more time here than last time, but, that was enough. Because we weren’t tired from all of the Greek and Roman stuff, we headed upstairs to a part of the museum we hadn’t been to before, the animal exhibits/dioramas.
It’s not big surprise that Christopher really liked this section. Having been with Kevin to the Natural History museum in Chicago, I have to say that I think these exhibits were way better than Chicago’s…just more action and better poses (those poses seemed very 1950-ish…these seemed much ‘newer’ and ‘fresher’.
This one, however, is a famous reproduction of an attack in the North African desert.
“Dad, look, these leopards are tearing this apart!”
One of the nice things about these exhibits was the detail in the landscape; the written description mentioned small animals in the landscape that were camouflaged that you really had to look for.
A panorama of an African landscape
There’s a hands-on Discovery Room in the basement; I wouldn’t have thought we wouldn’t have ended up back there but, Christopher asked for another trip down there.
Afternoon: Headed to South Fayette to see my cousin Jodie and her family. I have no pictures of this, but, am sure that I will see some pictures of Christopher, Garrett, and Colin online somewhere and grab them for here. They haven’t appeared yet though (grin!….probably some advanced lens issue delays their posting and I’ll have to ‘wiki’ to figure it out…).
After a few, uh, um, geographical issues, we finally arrived at the right house (….woman comes to door, says, can I help you, Scott looks at phone again and goes, oh, wrong address! Kevin would have just called me a ‘dork’…Christopher thankfully passed on that..). Had some worries about how Christopher would do; he can be awfully shy around new people at times, but, the words ‘Wii’ and ‘Hide-n-Seek’ seemed to do the trick. He’s asked when he can go back and see Garrett and Lil’ Dude again (Lil’ Dude being the name Christopher chose for Colin after forgetting his name for a while…) and enjoyed looking at Garrett’s swimming photos with me the other day….so, the next time we'’re in the ‘Burgh we’ll have to stop by again.
After leaving SF we headed over to the Mason’s for a quick “hey there” before heading to the hotel. Swimming, pizza, and sleep ensued.
