Nuclear engineers are a small club.  Our technical society, the American Nuclear Society (ANS) has two big meetings per year.  The winter meeting is usually held in Washington DC, and the summer meeting is held at a variety of pretty nice places.  Quite a few of them have been held in San Diego, which is one of my favorite places to go.  We always get to stay in a nice hotel, so it is a treat for Denise and Max while I’m running to and from meetings.  My airfare is paid by my company, and the hotel, this time the Town & Country Resort just east of downtown off I-8 makes for a great stepping off point for a great trip.

Rick has his own blog now. Yay Rick! Click here for the rest of the article and check out his new site Day Tripping with Rick!

 

 

Living in Pittsburgh is not convenient to many places.  One place we can get to without much trouble is Niagara Falls.  (I can never say “Niagara Falls” without thinking of the Three Stooges.)  “Slowly I turn….step by step….inch by inch”.  Kinda showing my age.  Anyway, it turns out that The Falls are a great place to go for a weekend, especially if you’re only about four hours away by car.  I had an uncle who lived just south of the falls in Tonawanda, NY and we used to go up to visit him a lot (more about Uncle Pat later).  We also used to go through on our way to Canada to play hockey when we were kids.  The result is that I’ve been there about 100 times in all seasons.  Things have changed since I was a kid, though.  Remember when you go that you need to have your passport with you now.

Rick has his own blog now. Yay Rick! For the rest of this article click here and please check out his site at Day Tripping with Rick!

 

Time for another biking adventure.  As I may have mentioned before, we are lucky enough to live on the Youghiogheny Bike Trail.  This trail is a rails-to-trails project that was started in the 1980s to make use of unused railways by stripping out the rails and ties, and replacing them with a crushed limestone pathway that is about 15 ft. wide which can easily accommodate bike traffic in both directions.  Because these trails follow the course of the railways, they typically follow rivers, are picturesque, and have very gentle grades.  The Yough trail is part of a greater system of bike trails that extend from downtown Pittsburgh, past Rick’s house, and off to the southeast toward Washington DC.  It is not unusual in the summer and early fall to see bikers laden with huge saddle bags making the 335 mile trek to the nation’s capital.  I hope to join them someday when Max gets a little older, and before I get too old.

Rick has his own blog now. Yay Rick! Please click here for the rest of the article and check out the rest of Rick’s site: Day Tripping with Rick.

 

Our last day in southwest Utah is the best of the lot, a trip to Bryce Canyon National Park.  National parks are like the story of Goldilocks. Most, like the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone are way too big for a day trip.  There aren’t many that are too small, but a few are just right. Bryce is one of these.

Rick has his own blog now. Yay Rick! Please click here for the rest of the article and check out the rest of Rick’s site: Day Tripping with Rick.

 

Today’s trip is one of our favorites.  We live near Pittsburgh.  Our rivers define us.  The Monongahela from the south, and the Allegheny from the north meet at Point State Park to form the Ohio.  When I was a kid, steel mills lined the Mon from just south of Pittsburgh for 50 miles.  Barges loaded with coal passed each other at every bend of the river providing the carbon for carbon steel.  At night, the Mon Valley lit up like day.  It was “Hell with the lid off”.

Rick has his own blog now. Yay Rick! Please click here for the rest of the article and check out the rest of Rick’s site: Day Tripping with Rick.

 

Today’s trip is a familiar one to us back east. In Pittsburgh, we are a scant 250 miles from Washington, DC. Add to that numerous trips to visit our friends at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and we get to our nation’s capital more than any other US city. However, to those of you who might’ve gone once for a school trip, visiting Washington is a wonderful adventure. And, almost everything is free. Well, of course, we all pay for it with our taxes…so….you might as well take advantage Washington has been the federal capital since 1790. At that time, the banks of the Potomac River were a mosquito-infested swamp. It was cold in the winter and unbearably hot and humid in the summer. It was thought that the decision to locate it here was to dissuade people from making a living in government. An able man was elected to Congress, spent his two years, then got back to his livelihood in his home state as quickly as possible.

Rick has his own blog now. Yay Rick! Please click here for the rest of the article and check out the rest of Rick’s site: Day Tripping with Rick.