Western Pennsylvania to West Virginia

Monday we went into Pittsburg, looking for Mr. Rogers. There is a memorial to him, down by Heinz Stadium, on the riverfront.

Then we went and found Mr. Rogersasaurus. I don't know why they did a dinosaur version of Mr. Rogers, but it was kind of sweet!

He's holding Henrietta Pussycat and King Friday!

Tuesday we went to Friendship Hill National Historic Site, home of Albert Gallatin

The home was continually built on to and was quite a large house, besides kind of hard to find your way around in!

Hallway leading from one end of the house into the other parts of the house

This was the view of the back of the house. So many windows and doors!

Albert Gallatin was Secretary of the Treasury for 13 years, helped negotiate the Treaty of Ghent that ended the War of 1812, and advocated for a National Road to help people migrate west.

We went to Fort Necessity National Battlefield next.

This was a reconstruction of the very small fort, this was the site of the first battle of the French and Indian War, also known as the Seven Years' War in Europe. Crazy part was learning about George Washington as a British officer during this first skirmish!

Part of this site is dedicated to telling the story of the National Road--the precursor to our interstate highway system of today. George Washington saw what a great thoroughfare it would be, as people were migrating west. He bought a parcel of land in the area. Later, in the 1800s, a family built this tavern along the National Road and named it after Washington.

Boot scrapers on the front porch so you can clean your boots off before you go in

Really interesting story: Braddock was killed in action during the skirmish and in order to keep his body from being desecrated from the French, George Washington buried Braddock IN the road and all the troops marched over it on their way out to disguise it. This is the modern monument for Braddock's grave

Braddock had started a road himself, marked here by the railroad ties

In the museum, there were these markers. I had seen them in passing as we zoomed down the road and couldn't tell what they were. They are the National Road markers!

Here is one that I managed to snap a photo of as we drove past

This is an original toll house for the National Road, that was how they gathered funds for upkeep

I love these signs--they are quite individual for the NPS units that post them

I've always liked signs--the wording on this one is odd.

We drove past California, Pennsylvania!

I don't remember which town this was, but this gives you an idea of how hilly western Pennsylvania is. The town is built right up the hills.

Wednesday we went to Allegheny Portage Railroad National History Site--they actually built a portage railroad to connect two lengths of canals and take the boats up and over the mountain to the other side.

The model in the visitor center gives you a good idea of how it worked. The site is located at the summit of the portage railroad.

They used hemp rope at first, it would break all too often. Then they switched to wire cables

The engine house is rebuilt, but you can see how it worked to go up and over the mountain

This is the Lemon House, the proprietors were the Lemons and when they saw the portage railroad was coming, built a bigger and better tavern to serve passengers.

We stopped by the Horseshoe Curve--a railroad that curves around. The incline or funicular railroad there was undergoing maintenance and was closed, so we did not see that. We DID see a freight train going around the curve as we were waiting to go through the tunnel on our way to the next stop.

If you look closely, you can see the two cars at the top and bottom of the funicular, the bottom car is kind of hiding behind the building.

So many beautiful stone bridges in western Pennsylvania

We were headed to the Fred M. Rogers Center which was on the campus of St. Vincent College. There is a monastery on campus and this beautiful cathedral

I'm not sure of the significance of a T-Rex and Mr. Rogers, but this was on the lobby and it said it was painted by the art department of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood the year he died. So maybe this is why there was a Mr. Rogersasaurus in downtown Pittsburgh?

The exhibit had all kinds of information about Mr. Rogers and his life, the show, and lots of cool artifacts

Like his sweaters and sneakers!

And some of the main puppets

The trolley car

And Daniel Tiger's clock!

We went to the cemetery to see Mr. Rogers' grave

Both Fred and his wife, Joanne, are buried in a family mausoleum in the cemetery. Look closely and you can read Fred's "headstone".

Thursday was QUITE a day. We drove into West Virginia

While driving down I-79, we heard a weird noise, almost like when tree branches hit the top of our rig. Then cars around us were trying to get our attention. We pulled off the side of the freeway and discovered that we had lost a solar panel! We decided to get off the freeway altogether and really look at what had happened.

Lovely for us, a Google shortcut to head back to the freeway after looking at the damage resulted in this:

We were high centered and totally stuck!

Look at how dug in the hitch was

It was bad! This is what stuck to the hitch

About two hours later, three policemen, a construction worker who stopped by, a neighbor, two tow trucks (one pulled us out, the other stopped to see if we needed help before we got unstuck), J was directing traffic around us because we were occupying half the two lane highway, we finally got unstuck

That was NOT how we expected the day to go! We are fine, the rig is fine, we got on our way to Charleston, West Virginia. We saw a groundhog and a beautiful sunset to cap off our day.

Friday we went and toured the state capitol building in Charleston, West Virginia. This capitol has the prettiest dome I've seen yet

But there wasn't much to see inside. The galleries to the House and Senate were locked, most of the building was office space (and had boring, windowless hallways that needed a new paint job)

Lots of beautiful chandeliers in the public spaces though!

We headed to New River Gorge National Park and Preserve--just barely got that designation so the signage hasn't quite changed yet!

The bridge is pretty amazing, we drove across it to get to the visitor center

West Virginia is the Appalachian Mountains and lots of beautiful rivers which results in some fantastic gorges

We walked down (and back up! The sign was so funny about "going down is optional" but coming back up is not!) to see the overlook of the bridge

You just do not get the sheer effect of how deep and wide this gorge was from the photos

We watched this little guy eating his lunch on our walk down to the overlook

Saturday we headed even further east, to the Pearl S. Buck birthplace.

She was born in this house--the house her mother grew up in

And raised in this house. It had a cute barn quilt square on the side! You can take a tour, we just stopped by to see it.

We went to the Green Bank Observatory, inside the National Radio Quiet Zone

There are big telescopes like this, SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) originated here, and this is where they got the idea for the Very Large Array that we visited in New Mexico.