Mom and I got up around 7:15ish, mom got in a shower, I got up, got dressed, got my stuff all packed up and ready before we went downstairs for our breakfast. There were lots of people in the café this morning...a lot of them getting ready for the Steelers game later on that evening. I had a sausage McMuffin, grapes and orange juice. Mom dissected her sausage and egg with a fork and had some apple juice.
We went back upstairs and finished packing up our stuff, made one last sweep of everything and headed downstairs with our bags. That guy was still in his van from the night before. He really must live in his van. We shoved everything in the back, connected the GPS and looked for some nearby cheap gas. It took us away from Pittsburgh, across the Alleghany River at a Marathon Gas station. That short detour allowed mom to compile her "to go see and do" list for the morning and for her to decide which to do first.
After I pumped and paid for gas I asked her, where do we wanna go first? She said let's head back into Pittsburgh and hit up The Strip before it gets busy. I'm sure later on today it would get super busy because of the football game later on today. We plug the coords into the Nuvi and off we went. We were up early enough before traffic got too bad. We found a parking area and I am happy we did because the place was going to fill in fast. We handed the parking attendant a few bucks and she wrote us a stub to keep in our window. She said to have fun.
We decided to walk towards Union Station, PPG Paints Arena and part of downtown. We went to Union Station first since it was the closest. We took various pictures with different angles. The architecture of this building was very unique.
We walked across the street to grab Slap Shot (GC70MA8) and it was shaped like a hockey puck. We enjoyed this find. We walked towards downtown and admired the buildings and the small park they were setting up with a Nativity scene, so far they got the lights up. We did notice a large truck with the Rams logo on the side of it. The equipment team was packing up the gear for today's game. The team must have been staying in the hotel. I checked the geocaching app to see if there were anymore nearby.
I grabbed Mellon Green (GC70Q67) just near the Veteran's Day memorial cards that lined the sidewalks.
We finished up our downtown tour by walking across the Sixteenth Street Bridge near the old Heinz Factory for some history and photos. It was pretty cool. They had turned part of the factory into businesses and apartment buildings. Sadly, there were no geocaches near here. We walked back towards The Strip for some shopping.
At this point mom and I were approaching almost 10,000 steps and it wasn't even noon!
We weaved in and out of several shops including many sports shops. Since we live on the west coast Penguin memorabilia and sportswear isn't readily available. I gotta get online, browse, pay shipping fees and wait. Here, I didn't have to wait...as long as I made enough room in my suitcase to bring it home. I like being able to see it, touch it and try it on but sadly, we live too far away. We took full advantage of it...well, at least I did.
Mom bought a few things including some T-shirts and whatnot for our family members. I found my Penguins sweatshirt, a couple of other souvenirs and I broke down and bought a Terrible Towel even though I am not a Steelers fan. I do appreciate the history and the Terry Bradshaw era but I loathe Ben Roethlisberger. The last shop we stopped at one of the workers noticed we were from out of town (we were wearing our Seahawks stuff) and he was curious if we were going to the game today. We told him, that we were visiting from Washington State and we were here for the Penguins game because we were fans. He thought that was pretty cool. He chatted with us for a while, we paid for our stuff and we walked back towards the rental.
But first, mom wanted to get mini doughnuts from the Peace, Love and Little Donuts shop around the corner. Mom had seen it on one of her searches and had to come. We chose six different flavors, an Old Fashioned, a strawberry glazed, a maple glazed and and the rest were glazed with different colored sprinkles. It was a fun mini doughnut party in a small box!
When we got to the lot we noticed a car had double parked in front of us. How are we going to get out? The parking attendant must have a key...right? Sure enough, she had a key and moved the car out of the way so we could get out. We were right, The Strip did fill up fast. We were glad we chose to do this area first.
I asked mom what she wanted to do next and she said the Andy Warhol Museum. We plugged that into the GPS and off we went. We drove up near the Northshore but missed our exit so we had to make a giant circle so we could get to the right exit. We made our way to the correct road and now we had to dodge all the Steeler tailgaters and semi busy traffic to find the museum parking. We finally found the right lot and the guy asked us if we were here for the museum or the football game. Museum, we said. He handed us a ticket stub and found a place to park. We walked across the street and into the museum. Mom and I both paid $20 to get in. There were six floors and a basement to the place. We used the restroom and started in the basement.
The basement was the creative floor to the museum. Here, you got to learn how to screen print/silkscreen. This artistic technique was frequently used by Warhol during his career. We had choices on what to screen print on and since we didn't want to spend the money so we chose the free tote bag. We needed to choose a color and a design. Mom went first and I followed behind her. It was fun learning how this was done with some of the museum staff who facilitated. We let them dry and then we decided we should start on the top floor and work our way down to the first.
The floors were basically divided up into some of his art work and his life through the decades. It was pretty interesting because I really didn't know that much about him...just stuff here and there. We took many photos and did some interactive stuff.
We made it back down to the first floor after about an hour or so. We had to post with his famous couch before we went into the gift shop just to see what kind of weird stuff they had in there. There was indeed some weird stuff. We walked back to the rental and I asked mom, where to next?
She was sifting through her stuff and wanted to see something called The Stacks. I told her to provide an address and we would go see them. We weren't that far away and followed Nuvi's directions. It took us southeast of Pittsburgh and we crossed over the Monongahela River into the Homestead neighborhood. The Stacks are remnants of steel factories from the turn of the century. By the 1980's a lot of them closed down when the steel industry collapsed. The Stacks were preserved to remind everyone of the past. Today, this area is now a small park surrounded by shopping centers and restaurants. Mom and I got out, got our photos and noticed there was a multi cache here, Stack'em Up! (GC5TEH9). So we spent time and worked on it. We got the numbers off the signs and found the cache nearby.
I asked mom if there was anything else she wanted to see while we were in Pittsburgh, she said, I think we saw everything on our list. I asked her if we should start heading to our next destination? She said probably. I had planned on taking the long way there because I was so close to West Virginia and Ohio that we had to stop and get caches in each of those states. She said sure, since we had some extra time. I was so glad I took the time to put the cache coords into the GPS before we left on this trip.
I set the GPS to our first West Virginia cache. I have been to West Virginia before back in 2006 for a fastpitch tournament in Morgantown while I was in college, however, I wasn't a geocacher yet. We got onto I-376 and followed the freeway northwest past the airport. We merged onto Hwy 30 by the small town of Clinton and followed that road all the way to the border of Pennsylvania and West Virginia, which probably took us about a half hour or so.
We pulled into the graveled park and ride and parked as close to the cache as I could. There were a bunch of cars, trucks and semi trucks. I pulled the rental between the muggles in cars and the guard rail so people wouldn't see me. I pulled out a duct taped pill bottle out of the corner of the guardrail. Route 30 Park and Ride (GC7R9XC) was my first West Virginia cache.
I wish it would have been a cooler one but we were kinda on a time limit. We didn't have enough time to drive around WV looking for a better one. I signed our names and left a pathtag for the next cacher. I put it back quickly avoiding muggles driving down the road and we were off to grab our first Ohio cache
We got back onto Hwy 30 and drove north over the Ohio River into East Liverpool, Ohio. I picked a cache on the app that would be accessible and easy to grab. What Time is It (GC1G8ME) was our first Ohio cache. We found a place to park and I walked up to ground zero. I had a really hard time pinpointing the container. Turns out, it was just a plastic bag with a logbook inside. It was strategically tucked away making it hard to find. I signed our names, got some photos and got back in the rental.
I asked mom if we should find something to eat and she said we could wait until we got to New Castle.
We got back in the rental and remembered the MLS Cup was on. It started at noon pacific time, 3:00 eastern time. We had perfect timing. I found a feed on my phone and synced it to the rental radio so we could listen to the audio while we drove to our hotel. Ben said he got up early and headed up to Seattle. Somehow he got tickets and was able to sneak to the 100 level with some people he knew. He was so stoked to be there but was sad I wasn't able to come.
Back when we planned this trip, we had no idea the Sounders would be in the MLS Cup. I was hoping this wouldn't be the last time the Sounders hosted an MLS Cup. We were the underdogs with Toronto at 65% and us with the chance of winning it at 35%. This would be the third time we've played Toronto in the last four MLS Cups. The first year in 2016 we beat them in a shootout, the second time, in 2017 they beat us 2-0 and this was the rubber match. Will we best them for a second time?
We listened to the game as we drove back to the interstate on Route 39/68. But first, I needed to get two more caches near the state line of Ohio and PA. I am a sucker for county, state, international borders, longitude and latitude lines...especially if there are caches at them. We stopped into a pullout near two caches, a traditional cache, The Point of the Beginning (GC5XVTM) and a virtual, The Alone Ranger (GCAC19) which were within 200 feet of each other. I found the traditional first and it had a little bit of water inside of it but the logbook was still sign able. I went to the structure at the state line and answered the question needed to complete the virtual cache.
We just picked up two more Ohio caches! Then I had mom get out of the rental and get a picture with me at the Pennsylvania sign.
The game was very back and forth during the first half and our hometown crowd was extremely loud over the radio. At the 45th minute with a few minutes of stoppage time, it was tied 0-0. We had a few chances to break it open but it just didn't happen. We were all getting anxious. I really wanted Ben to go to a winning game.
We followed the Route until to merged onto Interstate 376, at Vanport, PA, where we were immediately tolled. Yay turnpikes! We noticed across the river in Shippingport, PA we saw the nuclear reactors similar to the ones we have in Satsop at home. It took us about 30 minutes to get to New Castle while we listened to the second half. We finally broke it open in the 57th minute by a deflection off of the Toronto defender. Haha, they scored on themselves. It gave us a much needed goal at this stage of the game. I had the GPS take us directly to the hotel. We got into town and followed the directions to the Comfort Inn. After the first goal, the momentum shifted into our favor, we scored one more time before we got to the hotel with a goal, a straight shot from the top of the box. We had a 2-0 lead with less than 15 minutes left of the game. I am hoping that they played smart the rest of the game.
I let mom out and she checked us into the hotel. She came out and told me we were in room 113, the ground level. We drove the rental over to the door, grabbed our stuff and headed in...still listening to the game on the phone. We sat on the bed and listened to the rest of the game. We were getting anxious. Seattle broke it open once again with a long ball that we out ran the defense to score the final goal of regulation. We had this game at 3-0 however, there were three minutes of stoppage time and sometimes that lasts a lot longer than it seems.
We could have had a shut out but unfortunately, with most teams who think they won, they relax on defense allowing garbage goals/scores at the end of the game. It was a desperate attempt. Just before the end of stoppage time, Toronto made a garbage goal keeping them from being shut out. So I guess it was less embarrassing for them.
SOUNDERS ARE MLS CHAMPS!!
We won 3-1 and now have two MLS Cups under our belt and it feels awesome! It was a good weekend for the sports team's I root for. I hoped that luck makes it into Monday Night Football tomorrow evening when the Seahawks take on the undefeated 49ers. I wanted to put an end to the ridiculous and very lucky season San Francisco was having. I know we can do it.
I asked mom what she wanted for dinner, since it was 6 p.m., and she felt like pizza so I checked my phone to see if there were any pizza places around. There was one literally across the street from the hotel. It was called 4 Star Pizza and it was a mom and pop pizza shop. We drove over and walked in. I asked mom what kind she wanted so we just got pepperoni and black olives. We found out it was cheaper than we thought it was because it was Sunday. We only paid five dollars and some change for a medium two topping pizza. It was awesome. We didn't even have to wait that long either. They gave us plates and napkins. We headed back, got comfy and found the Sunday Night Football game.
It was the Steelers and the Rams. I wanted the Steelers to beat the Rams because it would be good for us. The more the Cardinals, Rams and 49ers lost, the better for the Seahawks.
While we ate and watched football, I posted some pictures on Facebook, did a few posts and even had some time to check my emails and whatnot. I took a shower around halftime and spent some time going through my suitcase reorganizing stuff so it would all fit. I always manage to bring back more than what I came with. My suitcase was so crammed it was front heavy and would tip over.
I couldn't stay up any longer and watch SNF because today was pretty long, we drove a lot and we had to get up and do a lot of stuff tomorrow before we spent our evening traveling back to Washington. I struggled keeping my eyes open. I really don't like watching sports in eastern standard time, they start too late. I can't imaging watching any sporting event on the west coast that started past 7 p.m. Those poor fans. I brushed my teeth and passed out.
I did find out the next day that the Steelers won 17-12.
Mom and I found 7 caches, 5 traditionals, one multi and one virtual and two new states and three new counties.
Next Adventure: New Castle, Amish Country Tour, Yellow Dog Village and Plane Ride Back to Seattle
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