August 24 Steel

Last evening, Kay went outside and--is that a dog in the next-door neighbor's yard--no, a deer!  The doe then headed across the street with a fawn following, where they grazed on some bushes then headed across a corner.  

One of our hosts used to work for a local NPR radio station and she now does freelance work as having two small twin boys takes a lot of time. We received directions for a route from our other host who used to ride his bicycle everywhere around town until an injury forced him to use a car more. We used his route to travel across about 5 miles of Pittsburgh, avoiding major hills, to return to the river valley. Here we crossed the Monongahela on the Hot Metal Bridge, called that as molten metal was transported across the bridge to be further processed on the other side. We were about 3 to 4 miles from the confluence of the two rivers to form the Ohio, so we rode back on the trail along the river most of the way to where we crossed yesterday to see the sights and to start the Great Allegheny Passage (GAP) trail from its beginning. We stopped and read about all of the historical plaques along the river--there were a lot of them! So we had a lower-mileage day. .

It is amazing how big the steel plants were that used to be along the river and how what is left is just a small portion of its previous size. Now instead of the steel mills, there are fancy apartments, upscale stores and marinas. We had pleasant temperatures and clear skies.

At McKeesport, we crossed back over the Monongahela and started following the Youghiogheny River, which joins with the Monongahela there. This evening, we have pitched our tent in an Adirondack shelter at a trekker campground (for bicyclists, hikers, canoeists and kayakers) along the trail about 30 miles upriver from Pittsburgh. 

We went swimming in the Youghiogheny River to cool off. Trail volunteers were busy painting one of the vault toilets and sprucing up the site Chatted with one of the volunteers, a number of people passing by and one man, also camping, who is traveling by bike to DC and back from Pittsburgh