Philadelphia

William Penn Statue on top of the imposing City Hall.
The largest Statue on any building at 37 feet tall, designed by Alexander Calder.
Not to be confused with his grandson who gave us mobiles and stabiles.
Calder argued that the statue should face South so it could be illuminated by the Sun all day.
As you can see he lost.

City Hall

Convention Center with many floors.

Convention Center zoomed in. Note the faces between the holes.

That huge guitar rotates.

I happened to come upon Independence Hall. Since I have seen most of the City before
I did not go inside nor did I wait in the long line to see the Liberty Bell. It hasn't changed much.

The Wanamaker building, built in 1902 for John Wanamaker's Department Store.
The original Wanamaker's was built in an abandoned Railroad Station in 1876.
Mr Wanamaker was a leader in treating his employees respectfully.

Statue 'The Sign Boy' as seen above in front of Wanamaker Building.

This huge eagle in the main hall of the building has 5000 individual feathers.

I travelled to Philly to see the largest functional Organ in the world!
It has 28,000 pipes, twice as many as the Newberry Organ in Yale's Woolsey Hall.

The highest ranks of pipes are 7 stories above the floor.

The console of the organ is on the second level. Note 6 keyboards. The organist
played many different types of music (I heard a Disney song), total time was 50 minutes.
They invite the public to chat with the organist after the performance, I was the only one who did.
We had a nice chat. We discussed Woolsey, and he mentioned (with disappointment) due to contruction
on the seventh floor he could not use the highest pipes. With my limited knowledge of music I hadn't noticed!

The Battleship New Jersey across the Delaware from Penns Landing.
Possible day trip in the future.

Pittsburgh

Downtown Pittsburgh from Mount Washington.
Known as a City of Bridges you can see six crossing the Monongahela river in the foreground.
The Allegheny river is to the rear of Downtown, you can see a piece of it to the left.

Point Park is on the tip of Downtown Pittsburgh.
You can see six bridges crossing the Allegheny river, Pennsylvania is the bridge and tunnel capital!.
If I disregard Connecticut's only highway tunnel, a short one less than a mile from my house,
I can say I went through more tunnels in three days than the rest of my life!

I used this clock on Macy*s as a reference to find my bearings, and my car.

A detailed structure, note the windows on the Penthouse level are the smallest.

Zoomed in on the Sunny side of the building.

A Tower.

I love the curved lines of this bridge and took photos from many angles.

When I first came to New Haven, Yale was covered in Ivy.

The French also helped us fight our revolution.

North America was settled by people from many nations.

The Riverboat theme is everywhere, they came up the Ohio to where it split
into the Allegheny and Monongahela. This does not appear to be a real paddlewheeler.

This Tunnel through the mountain is for busses and trolleys.

The only Trolley I saw on the trip. Philadelphia had Trolley Tracks but no trolleys.

When you are known as 'The Steel City' you have sculpture that is large, heavy, and includes a blast furnace.

I travelled up the mountain often. This three family home has a wonderful
view of Downtown. The three owners don't seem to agree on color or window style!

Plaques at the top of one of Pittsburgh's two remaining inclines.
There were once five that provided transportation to the top of Mount Washington.

Looking down the incline before I started my round trip.
The two cars balance each other, one goes down as the other goes up. Pennsylvania is
very hilly and I saw inclines at two more stops in my journey. My wife and I have been
on one in Northbridge England and Quebec Canada (the French call it a Funicular).

Looking up the incline from inside a car waiting for a zillion kids to board.

Looking up the Monongahela Incline, which happened to be closed that day.

The cashier at the Duquesne Incline told me they only accept coins and pointed me
to a change machine. I cringed at how 40 Quarters would pour out for my $10 bill.
To my surprise Pittsburgh is using the dollar coins! Here you see a 1979 Susan B Anthony,
2007 John Adams, and 2010 Abraham Lincoln $1 pieces. I had thought they were all withdrawn
due to being too similar in size to a Quarter for blind people to tell apart. The Anthony coin
has an 11 sided recess to alert the blind, the newer coins do not. It took some close observation
to figure out the back side of the Anthony coin: The Eagle is landing on the Moon and the Earth is
in the upper left with the Western Hemisphere showing! Note all appear to be made of a different alloy.
The Presidential Dollar Coins are still in production though I never saw one in Connecticut.

The Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh has many exhibits aimed at kids.
What caught my eye was a huge Model Railroad layout. It used the three rail track common for Lionel.

No Pittsburgh train layout would be complete without an incline.

Or an amusement park.

Or a baseball field.

Girl plays Air Hockey against a robot. They seemed evenly matched.

My astro buddies have seen meteorites from the mile wide Berringer Crater
in Arizona. This is the third largest piece found. I visited the Crater in 2012.

Basketball tossing Robot lines up an over-the-head toss.

It throws to a basket to the left of this view. Accuracy was over 50%.

Girls climb the side of a "Space Station".

Kennywood Amusement Park

Kennywood, like Lake Compounce, is very old. For 11 years Kennywood owned Compounce.
They have kept several of the old rides including this car ride and some wooden Roller Coasters.

I've seen this type of ride in several parks, this one seems to always have girls riding.

I can't beleive I've seen one as tall as this SkyCoaster!
WIKI says both Kennywood and Lake Compounce are 180 feet tall.

Garden and Fountain.

Fountain, Log Ride, and Black Widow. Note how tall the swing is.

Gazebo.

My wife and I rode on the Original Steel Phantom. With a 225 foot drop at 84 MPH
it held the world record at the time. The one in the photo is the Phantom's Revenge, similar except
they removed the loops and corkscrews. I agree with that, I was nausiated that day in 1998!

The Phantom has a drop greater than it's height. This is possible because
it goes a short distance down a ravine (toward the Monongahela river). This makes the second
drop longer (and faster) then the first.

This fountain reminded me of visiting Eleanor at Yale New Haven Hospital
which has one like it in the lobby.

The sign is correct, George Washington was in the area before Kennywood.

Those are legs sticking out from the circular swing seat.

About 40 people fit on this ride. The girl in the middle had her
sandle fall off, the attendent picked it up for her. Most of the young ladies took
their footwear off if there was a chance of loosing it..

Driving Back East from Pittsburgh

The Allegheny Portage Railroad requires some explanation. The Pennsylvania Railroad needed
some way to cross the mountains to compete with other routes of cargo transport like the
Great Lakes. They built a means to pull train cars carrying cargo or even canal boats up
inclines to get over the mountains. The Portage Railroad had severel inclined sections to
pull the cars slowly uphill, pulled by "stationary engines" in sheds at the top of each hill.
These were the early days of steam trains, the Portage opened in 1834.
One such section has been restored/recreated and is a National Historic Site in Gallitzin, PA.