Pennsylvania Vacation

Deb­bie and I spent three days in Penn­syl­va­nia for a last gasp at cou­pled free­dom before the Kid arrives. I planned out our itin­er­ary well in advance and we had a great time; plen­ty of stuff to do and plen­ty of time to do noth­ing. We left Mon­day morn­ing and went to Pitts­burgh where our first stop was the Strip Dis­trict. The Strip is basi­cal­ly Penn Avenue and is a bit like Cleve­land’s West Side Mar­ket area, except longer in dis­tance and less cor­rupt­ed by expen­sive­ly uncom­fort­able town­homes. We ate at the Small­man Street Deli right after we arrived, basi­cal­ly a shot in the dark choice, but an excel­lent one. They cure all of their deli meat in-house, buy their bread from a local bak­ery and make their sides fresh. Deb­bie got a roast beef sand­wich with moz­zarel­la and toma­toes as her side, and I went with pas­tra­mi on rye and mac­a­roni sal­ad [pic].

After lunch we strolled down Penn Avenue and win­dow shopped. I end­ed up buy­ing some tart pans from a kitchen sup­ply store, an item I’ve been unable to find in Cleve­land. We also went to this place called Fudgie Wudgie which has the smoothest fudge [pic] I’ve ever tast­ed. Then we drove around down­town Pitts­burgh, gawk­ing at how much live­li­er and less run-down it appears than Cleve­land and went to the Pitts­burgh Zoo, which isn’t near­ly as nice as the Cleve­land Zoo, although it does have a much nicer aquar­i­um. Deb­bie bought the coolest a stuffed octo­pus in the world. While get­ting lost down­town I got a glance at the PPG Win­ter­gar­den, which I thought was a great idea and cer­tain­ly some­thing that Cleve­land could ben­e­fit from hav­ing. Through­out our Pitts­burgh stay I could­n’t help but com­pare Pitts­burgh and Cleve­land; after a few days of reflec­tion I think the main dif­fer­ence between the cities is that Pitts­burghers seem to have a greater sense of sol­i­dar­i­ty and pride in their city than Cleve­landers. I’m not sure what the rea­sons are for this, but I heard no one say any­thing bad about the city the entire time we were there, some­thing which it seems even peo­ple who claim to take pride in Cleve­land [like myself] can’t help but be down on the town quite often [some­thing I try not to do.]

We left Pitts­burgh and head­ed south­east, toward a lit­tle bed and break­fast called the Glades Pike Inn. We got one of their pack­age deals to go see the Frank Lloyd Wright con­struc­tions, Falling­wa­ter and Ken­tuck Knob. I’d been to both hous­es years pre­vi­ous­ly on a trip with my mom. It was such a good time that I decid­ed to go back. The Inn was built in 1842 as an inn, and was per­fect­ly suit­ed to be a bed and break­fast. Our room had a fire­place, which was very very nice. The innkeep­er, Janet L. Jones, was very hos­pitable and eager to direct us to oth­er local restau­rants and places to vis­it. She’s def­i­nite­ly inter­est­ed in build­ing up the tourism for her neck of the woods and is a go-get­ter. She rec­om­mend­ed that we have din­ner at the Pine Grill which was deli­cious. Deb­bie and I got the same thing, pesto-topped orange roughy with herbed rice and steamed veg­eta­bles [pic]. I also had a Penn Dark, which tast­ed a bit like alco­holic Coke, with­out the sweet­ness.

The next day we went to both Falling­wa­ter and Ken­tuck Knob. Deb­bie and I both agreed that Ken­tuck Knob was our favorite, which was my opin­ion so many years past when I went with my mom. Ken­tuck Knob is owned by Lord Palum­bo who opened it for pub­lic tours in 1996, which was prob­a­bly right around the time I first vis­it­ed. The panora­ma at the top is the view from Ken­tuck Knob, and the farm pic­tured is where Lord Palum­bo and his fam­i­ly stay when they are vis­it­ing. They only use Ken­tuck Knob for enter­tain­ing vis­i­tors. On the far hill­side are some huge wind tur­bines pro­duc­ing elec­tric­i­ty for the area. If some­place that rur­al can make it hap­pen, I sure hope Cleve­land can do the same. In tran­sit from Falling­wa­ter to Ken­tuck Knob, we stopped at Ohiopy­le and ate lunch by the water­fall.

The sculp­ture gar­den at Ken­tuck Knob is some­thing that I think was added after my first trip there. Some of the sculp­tures were of the bor­ing var­i­ous-bits-of-rust­ed-met­al-weld­ed-togeth­er-non­rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al­ly type, but there was a Claes Old­en­berg applecore and some man-made ponds that were beau­ti­ful under the pines. Pic­tured to the left is Ray Smith’s Red Army. They also have two pieces of the Berlin Wall, I think they only had one when I was there last. Some­how I liked it bet­ter when they only had one. After the tour, we had a nice walk down the hill­side and back to the car. All that we pur­chased from the gift shops were post cards and a reusable gro­cery bag, $4.67 total.

We got lost on the way back, but end­ed up in Som­er­set for din­ner, and anoth­er relax­ing night at the Glades Pike Inn. The next day I was start­ing to get sniffly, and I’m full blown con­gest­ed [again!] now, but on our way back through Pitts­burgh we stopped at the Andy Warhol Muse­um. It only took about an hour to get through the whole muse­um, the only things I real­ly liked in there were a cou­ple of Jasper Johns paint­ings, most­ly we went because I thought Deb­bie would like it. Warhol has nev­er done it for me. Since we had so much of the day unex­pect­ed­ly avail­able to us, we went to the sales-tax-free Prime Out­lets in Grove City and blew a few hours clothes shop­ping. We got home around 7 on Wednes­day night, made din­ner, and zonked out. It was a good vaca­tion.

You can view all of the vaca­tion pho­tos here.