The Great North American Adventure

June 22, 2007 -

7:48 AM - Beautiful sunny day in Maryland for the start of our journey! Off we go into the wild blue yonder.

12:30 PM - Miles: 260 - We arrive in Pittsburgh!

We had plans but plans were made to be trained.

1:00 - When we investigated the walking tour - it actually started at 12:00pm.  Thanks www.post-gazette.com for the wrong info.  So instead we did our own walking tour to the Heinze Museum

5:00 pm - Went to dinner at August Henry. Can't beat FREE chicken wings. I had soup and salad, Darrell had a HUGE club sandwich with fries.

6:00 pm - Darrell goes solo to the Gallery Crawl. Teresa makes her way back to the hotel to work off the chicken wings.

8:00 pm - Teresa and Darrell walk up Carson Street - very cool, very eclectic, very much like the Queen Street (Toronto) that I grew up with. Darrell  scored 2 amazing CD's - Marvin Gaye's - Whats' going on! and Daddy Yankee. What a mix!

Off to the Festival of lights. Pittsburgh is a city of art and they are putting their artwork on the buildings to showcase local artists.

Top 3 Highlights for Darrell

1) How big August Wilson (author of AA literature and plays) is in his home city.

2)  Heinz Museum - Pulitzer Exhibit - pictures around the world from Pulitzer Prize Winning photographers, Soul of the Soldiers, and the Sports Museum.

3) Carson Street including  new development around the 27th block! Cheesecake factory was around that area!

Top 3 Highlights for Teresa

1) The Soul of the Soldier Exhibit at the Heinz Museum depicted information and pics about the African American soldiers who went to Vietnam. Didn't realize that Marvin Gaye's brother who went to Vietnam inspired "What Going On!"

Darrell and I performed a mini karoke of "Ball of Confusion" - no applause please - just throw money.

2) Carson Street was cool! Very Haight Ashbury, coffee shops, used cd stores and very down to earth people. Loved it.

3) Reminiscing at the Heinz Museum of all the Heinz commercials with the jingles of "Anticipation - anticipayaytion- it's making me wait". Didja know that John Heinz who founded Heinz 57 got the idea while in a train in New York. He saw a sign that said 21 styles of shoes. He started counting how many types of foods Heinz made and stopped counting (thru exhaustion probably) at 57. Kept the Heinz 57 name until 69.

Funny Stuff That Happened'

The view from our hotel isn't of the 3 rivers. Not of the skyline. But of the local loonie bin. We are in Lindsay Lohan Rehab Central. Too funny. But we love our Holiday Inn Express. It's close to all the action and gives us a good powerwalk downtown.

Thanks everyone for you beautiful  bon voyage messages! Keep checking in to see updates.