In regards to last week’s post – we died. End of blog. Thank you for viewing.

So what am I on about? Did we survive? Did we make it? As Kate mentioned at the very end of last week’s post, we had stayed the night at a vaguely named rest area with suspicious water quality and lingering police. It all turned out fine. We slept peacefully and no one bothered us at all.

We awoke and after doing some quick and easy cooking for ourselves we started the drive out of Ohio and into Pennsylvania passing through just the upper tip of West Virginia. It was here where Kate insisted on singing at me in the car the first few lines of Take Me Home, Country Roads by John Denver before weirdly morphing it into a freeform song about whatever roadsigns and plants or animals came into view. I love her. I’m where I wanted to be.

It was a maintenance day, so grocery shopping and laundry was the excitement we had in store. We picked up some essentials at Kroger, and then headed over to the Spin Launderette for some clothes cleaning action! Sorry, we were too busy and distracted by all the fun we were having to include any photos. We stopped at a nearby coffee shop where Kate was going to write her blog post but they didn’t have WiFi so it would have to wait, which is why it got posted late! They did have tasty coffee though.

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That evening is where this post really starts. We made our way out to the Cedar Creek Trekker campground, navigating tremulously through an incredibly dense fog. The campsite itself is a tranquil spot reserved for people who are traveling along the Great Allegheny Passage, which is a hiker trail that runs from Washington D.C. all the way up to and around Pittsburgh. The campground is strictly reserved for those who are “traveling the trail and wish to camp overnight” so we made sure to walk the trail a little. A good 30-40 yards worth.

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Cooked ourselves some dinner and then went to bed.

That next morning we awoke and after a quick stop for some exercise and free bagels at Planet Fitness, it was time to head into Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – The Steel City. This had been a stop on our list from the beginning as Kate’s brother Thomas and his girlfriend Kassie had moved here and we wanted to visit them. As it happens they moved back to Las Vegas just a few days before we departed on this journey and we ended up exploring the city at their recommendations even though they weren’t here to accompany us.

We knew that later in the evening we’d be having some fancy dinner so we wanted to dress the part. We didn’t really pack much in the way of fancy dress clothes but we did what we could and set out for the day’s adventures all dressed up. Of course Kate looked fabulous. It was a warm and humid day in Pittsburgh. Oh well! What we sacrifice for fashion, amirite?

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We parked near a public library, and after using said library we made our way over to the Mattress Factory. If you are like I was, having never heard of it, allow me to summarize thusly; The Mattress Factory is an experimental modern art museum. They have large installations, house sized ones. In fact the first that we visited was a complete house turned into an ever evolving exhibit. The premise of the exhibit is the deconstruction and reimagining of what it even means to be a house. It asks the questions: What is a house? Why does it take the form it does? Does it need to? What difference do the parts and pieces make? – As you explore all three floors you find yourself wandering through an exploded dollhouse diorama. Rebuilt around you as if by a madman, it is made of bird cages, playhouse parts, dollhouses, assortments of wood and metal. It was absolutely fascinating. Like walking onto the set of an absurdist horror film.

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The second exhibit was in another building around the corner and explored the idea of alien protests. As in, an alien has landed and has begun protesting. It was …strange.

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These were both auxiliary to the main building – which housed some very intriguing exhibits that explored light and space, and the disorientation of self. My favorite of the rooms we were able to explore (side note: tickets were half-price as a lot of the exhibits were temporarily closed for new art to be installed) was this long dark room with a rectangle at the far end. It was illuminated to look like a screen almost. With less patience a person may have thought it was just a blank projection screen and walked out – but as you got closer and closer, it became apparent that it was not a screen at all but actually a cavernous void at the back of the room lit from within by black lights. It sounds so simple but it was executed wonderfully. There was another room that was entirely dark and required 15 minutes of sitting in the dark as an exploration about the blending of perception of external stimuli and the projection of the mind. Lastly we visited a pair of rooms that were fully mirrored and either darkly lit again by black lights or brightly lit and adorned with bright orange polkadots.

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You’d think with this much mental stimulation we’d be full up on art – but no. Pittsburgh has got it in spades and we just ate it up. Right along the alley where you’d find the Mattress Factory, there are a set of painted houses all done with unique murals. About halfway between where we parked and where we were is a funky little spot called Randy Land which can only be described and pure unadulterated joy brought to life by hopes, dreams, and a WHOLE lotta paint. Randy bought the property on a wish for $10,000 at auction and worked tirelessly as a waiter by day and by night as the most unstoppable happiness prophet alive. Slowly but surely transforming his house and property into a public art space where everyone is free to come and just be happy, taking in the world of silliness and color he has created there.

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After visiting Randyland we made a stop over at the Strip District, where our fancy dinner was set to take place – only problem was that we were a couple hours early. So we stopped into an Irish pub and had a pint or two in addition to some soft pretzels. We left to walk around the area some, popping into Primanti Bros just to take a look. We knew we weren’t going to order as we didn’t want to spoil our dinner but it is a Pittsburgh icon and we at least wanted to see what was on the menu. We explored a couple more stores within the area to kill some time before our reservation.

The Dinner.

We were treated to dinner by Kate’s brother Thomas. He graciously sponsored a meal for us at a spot that he and Kassie really liked when they had lived in town. We sat down for our meal at Bar Marco and what will follow is as best as I can do it justice in blog post format.

For our meal we ordered The Cheeses and a Caesar Salad, intending to split them between us as appetizers and to drink we ordered a couple of cocktails: the Monkey’s Knees and the Juan Collins. For our entrees we went with the Arancini and the Gemelli Genovese. The cheese plate, salad and drinks all came pretty quickly which was good because there were only so many poses I could strike while trying to look handsome in the evening light pouring in through the window we were sat next to.

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The cheeses were two fold, one soft, one firm. Served alongside almonds and a lightly sweet marmalade. The salad greens were incredible. Very lightly dressed and the anchovies were quickly gobbled down. Everything was so fresh and bright. The Arancini – to describe it like a luddite: it was like a fried mac n cheese ball but different and better, so, so much better. Gooey inside, delicately breaded and fried to perfect crispness on the outside. The insides were like a crumbly corn bread risotto of pure flavor all wrapped around a flowing center of melted cheese. The Gemelli Genovese was a creamy pesto with runner beans. Again fresh, featuring a blossom of vibrant basil flavor. To me the star of the dish had to be the noodles themselves, cavatappi – fun medium/large curls and perfectly cooked. Strong enough to hold the pesto but still able to allow its own flavor to come through. The runner beans I admit for my own tastes fell flat but Kate praised highly. I guess that shows what I know. Kate even said that the beans tasted like childhood, they were fresh and lightly cooked.

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All in all it was a magnificent dinner and we owe it all to Thomas for his generous donation and equally great recommendation. Thank you a thousand times over.

… If anyone else is feeling generous and wants to buy us dinner we are OPEN AND ACCEPTING. LOL! We’re doing alright but free dinner is free dinner 🙂 Plus, you get the benefit of having it being written about by two complete amateurs!

And now that I’ve gushed about dinner I will gush again, but this time about breakfast. Let me not jump too far ahead, after dinner we headed back out to the Trekker campsite but when we got there the gates were locked and we couldn’t get in. So we headed to another site, it too was a dud as it required parking our car somewhere sketchy and then hiking into the woods for camping. So we drove off again and ended up at a rest area. In the morning an ornery lady was there to remind us that the rest areas are not for people to stay long term at… When Kate talked to her and explained that we were touring the country and not homeless, her attitude changed completely. Homeless by choice and sleeping in your car? Okay. Homeless not by choice and sleeping in your car? Not okay.

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We headed back into the city to get breakfast at another place that Thomas suggested: Bitter Ends Garden & Luncheonette. Tasty, tasty, tasty. They only operate the restaurant half of the week, and they have a farm/garden that provides much of the food for the cafe. Order at the counter and then grab a coffee mug from the huge assortment of mismatched mugs lining the shelves under the order counter. Take a seat and when your food is up, it is brought to you. There are only a few tables inside this tiny little shop and we chose the one at the back situated right under the hanging racks of freshly baked bread. We had ordered two veggie breakfast sandwiches, some potatoes, and some peach jam toast. They offered a peach jam toast with bleu cheese and Kate had wanted that one but as I ordered I requested the one without. She didn’t notice though, and we both thought the toast was amazing. All of the food was amazing.

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Another bit of strolling around that area before we went to visit Point State Park for a while, right at the confluence of three rivers smack dab in the city. We walked the waterfront for a while and scoped out the fountain on display, looking across the water at the Ketchup Sport House and other buildings. We then headed over to the Allegheny Cemetery. Without having to go pay respects to certain dead people, walking through a cemetery can be really peaceful. It is almost always quiet, beautiful, and full of interesting sculptures and structures. This was no exception. A very large and old cemetery, there was a lot to take in. We had only walked about 20 minutes or so in when Kate’s brother, whom Kate had been actively texting, proclaimed that we were only a few minutes walk from their old house and that we absolutely need to go try some ice cream sandwiches from the corner market nearby.

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So we did. Who am I to say no to ice cream sandwiches? Of course they were also very tasty. We stayed at the market for about an hour, eating ice cream and escaping the heat and humidity. This was to be our last evening in Pittsburgh and we were scheduled to go visit Punxsutawney on the next day. As we often do though, toward the last few hours in a location we started to feel that our trip plan needed amending. We decided that instead of spending a whole day in Punxsutawney and then heading into the forest for a night that we would instead swing by the Weather Prediction Capitol of the World just for the evening and spend an extra night in the forest.

Good thing we did as if we had tried to spend more than an hour in Punxsutawney we would be hard pressed trying to find something to hold our interest. As it turns out the film Groundhog Day, which is most of the reason we wanted to visit this tiny town, was not filmed here. Like, not even a little. It was filmed about 70 miles north of Chicago. Gobbler’s Knob is a real place but it isn’t in the center of town, it is a couple miles outside of town and isn’t open past 5 p.m. There are a lot of statue groundhogs decorating the streets as the real weather prediction ceremony does happen in Punxsutawney but that is about it.

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Feeling a little let down, we agreed that it was best we didn’t spend a whole day there. We left and made our way out to the Allegheny National Forest. Oh man, if I had thought we had seen thick fog before – this was genuinely scary. It was a hair-raising experience to be driving along and have the world around you vanish into nothingness. Kate was driving and was a rockstar of calmness. I was not. However, she guided us safely out into the woods where we were able to eventually set up for the night. We had arrived pretty late so we didn’t get to see much that first night.

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When we awoke, I had a terrible sore throat. Which could only mean one thing. Time for Brian to be sick again. This trip has been a constant back and forth for me. A week or two of feeling great, a week or two of sickness or injury. Luckily most of that day I didn’t feel too awful. We explored around the forest, and I even made friends with some reptiles. Heading up to Loleta Recreational Area and then back down. The whole river system around here has been used for thousands of years and wars have been fought by native peoples over the area. The French explorers even nicknamed the river the River of Hate. We moved our car to a new campsite later that evening and set up a tarp canopy and our tent underneath as it had rained the night before and we wanted to be more prepared this time.

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That night was miserable for me. We tried to go to sleep around 8 p.m., I didn’t fall asleep and stay asleep until about 2 a.m. at best. I’d sleep for a little while and then wake to cough, hack, wheeze and sneeze, blow my nose, and repeat before calming down enough to try sleeping again. It was only at 1:30 or so that I even remembered we had packed away some NyQuil and DayQuil in the car. I got up and went out into the night in search of relief. I feel a little silly thinking about my cold-symptoms causing me agony in the night knowing that wars had been fought where I was sleeping and that people for thousands of years before me had probably had MUCH harsher nights there. This is the way of the world though, no?

Anyway, after finally being able to fall and stay asleep – in the morning I had felt much better and just had some of the lingering symptoms of bad allergies (some runny nose, excess mucus, etc.). I’ve been feeling mostly better since then just coughing from time to time, working out any gunk that has built up.

After a couple nights in the woods it was time to move on. We packed up and headed north. We were eventually working our way toward Rochester, NY to visit my brother but first we needed to stop in Buffalo to visit Niagara Falls.

We may have mentioned before but we have this big list of places that we intend to travel to. Every time someone mentions a suggestion or place to visit, as long as it is fairly close to where we were already planning on going, we add it to the list. I’m not sure who suggested it – but on our list was the phrase “beef on wick” and we had no clue what it meant. So as we approached Buffalo I did a little internet research to discover that Beef on Weck (note the E) is a regional sandwich. Roast beef on kummelweck roll. If someone had raved to us so highly as for us to add it to our list, we might as well stop and give it a try. Kate did a little looking and “the place to go” was Schwabl’s as they had ben featured on the Travel Channel on two separate occasions. Wanting to experience this new to us sensation the right way, we agreed that we’d go there.

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This place is like a restaurant stuck in time. The decor, the staff, the menu, the attitudes. The roast beef sandwich was pretty good, no arguments there. The sides we ordered, also pretty good. The issue we had was that they charged $15 bucks for a sandwich and a couple of small sides. Then charged us $3 when we wanted to split the food onto two plates – which is a crummy policy for places to have but whatever. The irritating part was that they didn’t even SPLIT THE FOOD FOR US. They charged us $3 just to hand us an extra plate and we had to messily slide it onto a second plate. This is an absurd practice that they need to figure out.

The only other patrons when we were in there were all retirement age and they were discussing how raising the minimum wage was so greedy of the youth….. “My first job paid $1.50 an hour.” and things like this. There was a definite culture clash.

We left and made our way up to the Falls. Niagara Falls on the Canadian side is like a big ol’ carnival. There are rides and attractions, casinos, music venues and concerts. We did not go to the Canadian side. On the American side it is nice – but it is just a state park like any other. Some walkways, and view points. Nice parks, a restaurant or two, gift shops, and a boat ride. We walked all along the rim of the Falls and took in all the sights we could, snapping pics and being tourists. When we got to the end of where the attractions stopped there was a trolley stop there and we knew it ran back to where our car was parked. I approached the trolley driver to ask if the ride was free, he told me it was not and I thanked him and turned to walk away. He stopped me and offered us a free ride as it was after the busy season and the trolley was mostly empty anyway. What a nice fellow. He also told us that Goat Island (where we had parked when we first arrived) was named so because an early settler had brought all their farm animals onto the island to avoid natural predators in the area, the harsh winter had killed them all save for one goat. The island was named in honor of that resilient ol’ guy.

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After the Falls we drove out of Buffalo and found a truck stop just a ways outside of Rochester by a small town called Corfu. We set up the car in the parking lot and slept overnight, excited to head out the next morning to visit my brother Tyler in Rochester.

When we got into town we headed to his house and were greeted with hugs. It was nice to see him again as I hadn’t seen him for a couple of years (since he last visited Las Vegas) and for many years before that. It was also nice to try and dust off my sign language skills as I don’t use them nearly as often as I should back home, even though I have a growing group of friends who are signers themselves.

We came inside, did some laundry, and then headed out into town to grab a bite to eat. Stopping first at some local destinations such as the High Falls. A beautiful waterfall located right in the downtown area. It was actually for this and three other waterfalls that Rochester exploded in growth. Being able to harness hydro power transformed this tiny village into a thriving hub of industry. Mills of every type, but prominently flour, brought lots of jobs and growth to the area for well over a century.

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Later came hydro-electric power and it was off to the races. Huge companies were founded here, including Kodak and Bausch & Lomb. It was only the downfall of the Kodak company starting around the 1990’s as they failed to adapt to the increase in digital camera technology that the town really started to fall from its graces.

We walked around for a bit, popping our heads in at the abandoned subway line, then as hunger struck we headed over to a place called DogTown. Great hotdog shack – with a huge assortment of choices, including plenty of vegetarian and vegan options. We headed back to the house afterward and spent the rest of the evening in.

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The next day we intended to head out and take in some museums and local attractions. First stopping for lunch at a place called Aladdin’s Natural Eatery, which was this cool two story restaurant that had Escher-style stairs in the middle of it. We sat outside on the upstairs patio overlooking the street. We ended up moving two minutes later as it started to rain. We ordered some very tasty food: Lenchili (half lentil soup, half bowl of chili), an appetizer sampler, and a falafel wrap. We ate, and then decided we should try to only explore indoor activities as the radar indicated that the rain would probably persist on and off for a few hours. Tyler suggested we head over to Record Archive – an amazing record store / used / vintage shop. They had clothes, bikes, stereo equipment, a HUGE collection of movies, tv shows, CDs, records, and novelty gifts as well. Plus, a full bar and small stage in the back where they host live music every Wednesday. We spent the better part of an hour there just wandering and taking it all in.

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When we left, we ventured over toward one of the museums we had wanted to visit, the Memorial Art Gallery, but noticed that it closed at 5 p.m. and as it was already 3:30 we didn’t want to pay an entrance fee for such a short amount of viewing time. We looked at the outdoor exhibits which were freely accessible and resolved ourselves to come back the next day. Only they weren’t open the next day. Or the day after that. So of the two museums that we wanted to visit, we’re only going to be able to see one of them on the Tuesday we leave in the morning before we drive out of town in the afternoon. We headed back to the house and spent an evening in, relaxing, watching movies and ordering some Chinese food for the evening.

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Monday morning we left the house and went back downtown to the abandoned subway. We stopped for drinks at Fuego coffee before walking a block or two over the Broad street bridge where we then hopped a barrier to get a closer look at the crazy graffiti that adorns the walls down under the bridge where the subway ran. The subway system in Rochester was abandoned back in the 50s, having run for only a few decades. It was built for cheap because it used some of the existing infrastructure that had existed for waterways used to run mills and hydro electric power. However, because it was built around existing infrastructure and not designed to best serve the needs of the community, ridership had always been low. After a peak during WW2, total ridership tapered off as more road / highway / car travel became common. There have been attempts at repurposing it or even restarting service but the same problem still exists, the route kinda sucks. If it ran into and out of the downtown area and possibly out to the airport then ridership would explode. Anyway… here are some cool pics from the subway.

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We also walked over to MLK park and then took a short drive to the neighborhood of the arts where we spent a good chunk of the day. Walking around, taking in the sidewalk art and grabbing a late lunch at a cute little cafe called Starry Nites. We walked around the neighborhood a bit more, stopping in a kooky gift / art store located in an old firehouse built in the 1880s. They had a really cool variety of absurdly priced things.

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Lastly for the day we went over to the Rochester Fringe Festival which we didn’t learn was happening until just the night before. We stopped by a small photo showing, and then onto a free showing of “My Big Gay Italian Wedding” – it was pretty good, but by the end it was pretty cold sitting in the parking lot where the inflatable screen was set up.

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I’m going to end this post here even though we plan on going to another museum tomorrow – it’s just that this post has gotten monstrously long and I fear may never finish writing it. Kate will have to fill you in on the last day here when she covers what we get up to for the next week.

Much love – Brian.