Flt 93 Memorial, Pittsburgh, PA

We are only in the Rockwood, PA area for a week.  Our goals here were to take care of some business in Pittsburgh and visit the Flight 93 National Memorial.  We are near near a lovely state park, Laurel Hill, so we have several miles of hiking trails available and have managed to locate and visit a PA winery:

 Laurel Hill State Park is just a few minutes away and, as you can see, a very nice place to go for a hike!

the park has very nice beaches for summer fun!

There are a couple of covered bridges in the area.  This one is still in use but a 3 ton limit!!!

The Flight 93
National Memorial...

we will never
forget.

 I thought the memorial was very well done.  What was at one time, on 9-11-00, a horrible crash site, is now a beautiful and fitting memorial to those brave passengers who made the plane come down before the terrorists could fly it all the way to its intended goal, the Capitol.

The visitor center recounts that horrible day and there are personal objects, bits of the plane, and phone recordings from passengers trying to reach family before they overran the terrorist crew.

the walkway into the visitor center is the final flight path of Flt 93

a deck at the end of the flight path overlooks the field and boulder that marks the crash site

in the distance, the boulder that marks the crash site of Flt 93

flowers remain from the annual ceremony which took place a couple of days before our visit, on the left a wreath from Germany in remembrance of the German passenger that was on board

in the field near the boulder, a wall with all the crew and passengers names

in the distance you can see the visitor center building

there is about a 2 mile walk around the field, now very peaceful 

heading back to the visitor center under the viewing deck

 We drove into Pittsburgh one day and enjoyed a walk on the waterfront near Hines Field where the
Allegheny, Monongahela and Ohio Rivers come together:

our Jeep with some of the Pittsburgh skyline in the background

had some pretty bridges

 We spent a couple of hours in the Strip District.  A colorful melding of different cultures!

this place was awesome, we left with a bag of goodies including fresh spinach and garlic linguine!

some of our goodies!

Yes this is a church but
now no longer in use for
that purpose it is a
brewery!!!



Crazy huh????

while there we were treated to a little oompah music as  the brewmaster tapped an Octoberfest beer!

 Also checked out Southern Tier Brewery.....

they had a yummy cherry gose!







and lots of IPA's

Caverns and more Hiking in VA

Wrapping up our wonderful 1 month stay in this part of Virginia, we have done a few more hikes up off Skyline Drive in Shenandoah NP, a very nice hike along the Shenandoah River and visited 2 of about 6 caverns in the area.  Virginia has a lot of caverns.  We are staying at Endless Caverns Campground so we checked out the caverns here and we visited Grand Caverns in Grottoes because it is the oldest show caverns in the US.

High Top Mountain Trail

view from High Top Mountain

Grand Caverns in Grottoes, VA.  It was wow from the moment we stepped into the caverns!  This caverns has a high concentration of "shield formations".  An uncommon formation in most caverns, they have some 35+ here:

the ladder was left from days gone by, not in use now;)

colorful lights make this the rainbow room

this wonderful room was like a vaulted cathedral ceiling

wonderful drapery walls lead up to a very high ceiling!

in the middle and on the right, two very nice shields!

great examples of cave bacon

part of the Appalachian Trail

a nice, level, trail
(the first in a long
while) along the
Shenandoah River

Shenandoah River

Endless Caverns. Right where we stayed!

an old candle holder stills hangs
in place reminding us how tours
used to be here!

we had a few bats flying around in this cavern

We attended a mini bluegrass festival.  It was awesome!  Some of the musicians were Grammy and CMA winners and they were all great!