Day 35: The road to Abilene…

2016-06-15

Last night as we were getting ready to head to bed we were debating about whether to go ‘dahn ‘tahn (that’s Pittsburgese for downtown) for the Penguins Stanley Cup parade.  Marj thought Chet wanted to go and Chet thought Marj wanted to go…we were both trying to please the other by going…only to discover neither one of us REALLY wanted to make the trek to ‘dahn ‘tahn.  The projections were for 350,000+ people and there is lots of construction on the bridges going into ‘tahn.  We finally figured out what was going on and made the decision not to go…we sent a message to our buddy Tim who was going to meet us there…he was relieved as well…he was only going because we wanted to go.  Sound familiar????  There was a video Marj used to teach about this very scenario back in her Caterpillar days…it actually has a name called the Abilene Paradox.  It basically is the concept of group-think where everyone goes along with a plan to appease the others only to discover, nobody was in favor of the idea in the first place.  If you are curious, you can read more about it and think about how many times you have taken “the road to Abilene”!

Anyway…with that decision made, we decided to sleep in this morning.  Once we were up and around we headed to our all-time favorite breakfast spot, Eggs N’ At.  Kelly does an amazing job of serving up breakfast and her pancakes are excellent!  Our favorite is her pumpkin pancake which is a specialty pancake only in October and November.  We have been known to plan trips to Pittsburgh around the availability of her pumpkin pancake…it’s that good!  Today’s special pancake was pineapple upside down pancakes…they were yummy too!  As we pulled into the lot we were greeted by one of her famous signs…this one was in reference to the Penguins beating the San Jose Sharks.

Back to the hotel to do some laundry…yep, it’s laundry day again.  Once laundry was done we headed over to another of our favorite Pittsburgh spots, Pierogie’s Plus.  There is a geocache near there that we have wanted to get for several years.  Today we logged it successfully.

Pierogie’s Plus has an interesting story and pierogies that are excellent!  We even stopped in at Mancini’s bakery along the way to pick up some of their famous Twist bread.  With our food gathering done, we headed back to the hotel to have dinner in our room.  Sometimes it’s nice to not eat in a restaurant.  After dinner Chet headed over to the hotel lobby, they had Yuengling on tap for the nightly social hour…sometimes hotels are awesome!

Time for a little relaxation tonight…Chet is playing poker with his on-line poker group back in New Mexico.  Life is good!

Mileage Today: 34 miles    Total miles for the trip: 8,105 miles
(Chet says his arms appreciated the easy mileage day!)

States visited 28 and DC, States remaining 20

See our route on the map page.
More pictures at www.facebook.com/L48NI