Independence Day ~ 4th of July Weekend 2010

Saturday, July 3, 2010
A cool morning in the low 60s beckoned me to get out and explore. This time, I wound up on Mount Washington and the West End overlooking Pittsburgh and the Allegheny and Monongahela and Ohio Rivers. A great site and at 7:30 in the morning, it was still a bit hazy overlooking the river junctures.

The community of Mt Washington has all the hills and inclines you would expect in San Francisco where the streets are narrow and cars parked outside the older homes make for a tedious venture through alley sized avenues.

Mt Washington also has a couple of attractions for which I took advantage of one, the Duquesne Incline. It lifts passengers from West Carson on the river level to Grandview at the top in Mt Washington. Built in 1877, it is a working museum. It has a sister incline railway a half mile south, the slightly older Monongahela Incline, which was built in 1870. Tourists still take time to enjoy them.

This place seems to be all about a couple of things; tunnels and bridges. It seems you can't get anywhere without experiencing one or both.

Another thing is the confusion in traffic. Just because you're in the middle lane doesn't always mean you can go straight. More than once, I found myself caught in the wrong lane and had to stay with the traffic flow at a light, lest someone would begin blowing horns at me.

Sunday, July 4, 2010
After scouting out Pittsburgh again, I looked at spots along the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers where I thought be a good vantage point for fireworks at night. Every place I looked presented possibilities but each one gave me disturbing feelings of how it might be if there were some kind of emergency or disaster and I simply didn't want to be caught or trampled by a half million people. With those ideas tucked neatly inside my cranium, it was plain to me that the safest place would be back on Mt Washington again.

Parking was terrible and traffic through the narrow streets was frustrating but nevertheless, I still believe I made the right decision in finding a spot, literally, on the edge of the hill. Although I had to wait over 2½ hours it was a pretty good spot between an Indian family and a 4 pack of young Japanese students, each speaking their own language. We all watched a regatta, sky divers and the sun go down and at 9:30 PM, we received a spectacular light show over looking the Ohio, Monongahela and Allegheny rivers.

264 years ago, prominent people had a dream and a desire to be free to live their own lives with freedom to do as they pleased without the constraints of a king in another part of the world. Many died and most of the signers of the Declaration of Independence lost everything they owned including fortunes, health and loved ones. They did this for a hope for themselves and for those of us who would reap those benefits decades and centuries later.

Happy Fourth of July, 2010!


















God bless America!