Travelogue

We got to Hyannis late last night after a very busy 30 hours in New York. Thought I would share some observations and thoughts related to travel and other things, especially considering the rain that has finally caught up with us at the eastern end of the continent.


Pittsburgh is always enjoyable, especially with the chance to see familiar, beautiful and interesting people and places. I spent quite a bit of time with Leslie and her daughters. Michaela is holding her own after the most recent round of chemo, and was scheduled for a bone marrow biopsy today.

Evan wanted to have some pictures taken for his senior year from Mt. Washington, and it was a beautiful day for it.

I also took Leslie and her girls to the Carnegie Science Center, particularly the World War II-vintage submarine USS Requin which is permanently moored on the Ohio River adjacent the center.

We also greatly enjoyed the traveling exhibit of artifacts from RMS Titanic. Upon entering the exhibit, each attendee is given a card in the fashion of a ticket for passage, with information about a person that was aboard Titanic, along with their intended destination and those they were traveling with. The artifacts were very interesting, but also were presented in such a way as to deliberately associate them with their owner, or the other passengers and crew on board.

At the end of the exhibit there is a large list of all who were aboard, and whether or not they survived the tragedy. Evan told me that the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC employs a similar method of providing each visitor with information on an individual prisoner of a concentration camp, with information on whether or not they survived at the end of the tour.










On the way out of Pittsburgh we stopped at the Johnstown Flood National Memorial.
The memorial is located along what was the site of Lake Conemaugh and the poorly-maintained earthen dam that gave way under the pressure of torrential rain on May 31, 1889. The picture is looking back toward what was the lake from part of what was the dam. Imagine that all of this was covered with water, which was then unleashed on the City of Johnstown and surrounding areas. Over 2,200 people died in what has been called the first and one of the worst man-made disasters in U.S. History.

Now before you start thinking that we're on some weird disaster tour, I'll have you know that we saw some very interesting and uplifting things in New York. I'll post some more tomorrow, but now it's time to make something of the day. Have a good one.