4th of July

Obviously I am behind in blogging...I'm blogging about our 4th of July weekend in Pittsburgh when it's the 21st of July. At least it's still July. Matt and I had quite an action packed weekend. On the actual 4th we went to the Pirates-Phillies game at PNC Park with my sister and brother in law. It was super hot, but at least the game had some action. Matt and I spent some time downtown afterwards watching the Three Rivers Regatta, and spending our free money we won at the Pirates game at the casino. On Friday we went to the driving range and then decided to visit East End Brewery. I highly recommend a trip there if you are a local, or even if you are visiting. The guys that work there are super nice and you can try anything you want! You can read about our previous visit here. 

Saturday my sister and I went to the Pittsburgh Zoo with my friend Nicole and her son Drew. I might be biased, but I honestly think that the Pittsburgh Zoo is one of the best. I like it because the habitats are a main part of the zoo so it's not super depressing. I hate when you go to zoos and the animals are just right in front of you with no space to move around. The downfall is that you might not see every animal every time you go to the zoo in Pittsburgh, but I like to think the animals are slightly more happy. 

My friends Nicole and Drew

I pet this sting ray!

On Saturday we had a little picnic with my extended family. It was great to see everyone. Matt and I chose to go to Pittsburgh for the 4th of July because we will be visiting New England and his family later this month. When we originally chose that date I forgot that my mom was going to be out of town on vacation gallivanting Croatia, so it was weird to be home without her, but I'm glad she was having a good time in Europe. 

We had to head back to Virginia on Sunday, but we decided to make a quick stop at the United Flight 93 Memorial. We always drive past the signs on our drives to Pittsburgh, so we decided to make time to go this time around. It was a pretty cool side trip. The memorial is in it's very early stages, so you can't easily see everything the architect had in mind. We watched these videos on the NPS website after we got home, and I wished we had watched them before so I could have picked stuff out while were there. A lot of it isn't built yet at all, much like when we went to the memorials in New York. If you ever decide to make a trip here I highly recommend you speak with the park rangers. We found out some little known information about 9/11 and Flight 93. The ranger explained to us that the public actually knows very little about the specifics of flight 93 because the majority of the media was focused on the New York attacks and the Pentagon. 

Remembrance wall and gateway to the crash site

The large rock marks the site of main impact. 

The black wall marks the edge of the crash site set by the Coroner.

View of the entire field and memorial