Thursday: Pick up Christopher at school at lunch time and hit the road. One stop at Taco Bell for his lunch before we hit the freeway and go go go. Christopher pulls out the Ipad and tries out the Netflix application to watch a Justice League movie while Dad listens to some podcasts and listens to a work conference call as we make our way east.
Stop for the night at Grandma’s. Meet the new cat, Quincy, and in a very Harry Potter like fashion, don’t get to meet the cat “who shall not be named, or seen for that matter”.
Had some great lasagna for dinner; I was really happy that Christopher enjoyed the meal. Immediately after that, Christopher starting campaigning for Uno! Christopher won the race to 500, but, didn’t storm off to his room crying so that means the game was a success. Still a few problems with the basic rules of the game for some participants, but, a fun time had by all.
Christopher asks to sleep in the lower level near “the cat that shall not be named”. Dad is up in the breezeway. The middle of the night is the witching hours…and the cat that shall be named makes his displeasure with the accomodations (very similar to a small boy who has to live under the stairs I guess) known. Turns out, if you’re sleeping in the breezeway, you can hear this really well. Christopher sleeps the sleep of the dead and hears nothing at all.
Friday: Head our for Pittsburgh around 8 am after a breakfast of giant pancakes and bacon. We arrive at the zoo a little before 10 am.
Thing 1 about the trip: was really surprised that it was still late fall down here. All of the leaves are long gone back home, but here they were still hanging on in places, like these red ones in the foreground.
The tiger was pacing back and forth…if you look at the first photo you can see he(?) is heading to the right…at the end of that ‘run’ for him is an observation window where this picture was taken; he’s about to turn around and head back the other way. Apparently he was worked up because this guy….
was being very noisy. Because, it turns out, he was trying to get very busy! As we walked up, he came over and mounted his friend and from our angle, it was as clear as day.
Turns out, noisy = frustrated.
As we left, they settled down together….
Thing 2: Either the animals were off-exhibit (no sightings of the giraffes, cheetah, or polar bear) or they were out and active. So, we got to see many of the animals moving around and that’s always a good thing. The zoo wasn’t very crowded at all, so, that was also a good thing.
Larger than a baby elephant!
Gorillas at snack time
Pittsburgh penguins….hah!
Christopher took his share of photos but as the trip wore on he relinquished these duties to me…
This is the best of my ‘through the glass pictures’. The (Nittany) Lionfish was looking good….
The baby sea lion never was in a good position for a photo; I snapped this one right after the second one crawled up on the rocks and the two of them started jawing at each other.
After the zoo we met up with Rob for lunch at Jerome Bettis’ Grille 36 down near the stadium. Christopher enjoyed his trip to the bathroom (there is one-way glass above the urinals…). After that Christopher and I headed to the hotel for some early afternoon swimming (more on the hotel in the next post). For dinner, we headed back downtown for Light Up Night.
Figured we needed to head up the incline earlier, not later, so, we did that first thing.
Took the ‘T’ over to the city and then hung out around the Clemente Bridge waiting for the fireworks. This picture stinks, but, PNC Park is lit up in the background and Donnie Iris and the Cruisers are performing in the structure on the center of the bridge. I wanted to make it to the main firework display after the concert, but, there was an earlier one at 8:40 that we could see (they shot them off down near the Point) and Cpher, who had been sniffling, crashed on me at that point and requested to call it an evening.
Probably a good thing that he called it a day, about the time I was taking this picture as we waited for the trolley there was a shooting going on above us (@ the Wood Street Station). I don’t think it was really crowded for Light Up Night, but, it seems like everyone from the age of 16-25 decided to hang around the station….we literally had to snake our way into the station to begin our journey back to the hotel.
