In the middle of May, my wife spent a weekend in Pittsburgh. We stayed in a downtown hotel. On Saturday morning, I went out for a walk. I started by crossing the Roberto Clemente (6th St.) bridge, from which I took the first picture.

I started by crossing the Roberto Clemente (6th St.) bridge, from which I took the first picture.

The foreground is the Allegany River, and the background is PNC Park, home of the Pirates. The boathouse houses a couple river rescue craft owned by the city. The roof of the boathouse is about 630 feet from home plate (as measured by Google Earth), so it’s probably pretty safe from bombardment. The folks in the yellow kayak came close aboard the buoy, read a message attached to it, and paddled off again. I guess they were involved is some sort of clue-following game, perhaps a treasure hunt. On the land, I encountered a couple bicyclists doing a similar thing.

Wandering down the river, I encountered some people who seemed to be setting up some kind of river festival. I don’t know if the boats in the second picture were involved with that, but I did think the tow boat looked pretty shipshape.

On my way back, I got a picture of two interesting craft on the upstream side of the bridge. I later learned that they are dragon boats that belong to a city-sponsored youth group. The dragon heads aren’t fitted, but you can see they each have a big tom-tom in the stern. Pittsburgh has a Dragon Boat Festival in the fall.

The dragon heads aren’t fitted, but you can see they each have a big tom-tom in the stern.

I walked back to the park sometime after lunch to find the event in full swing. It appeared to be the project of Venture Outdoors. There were about 100 kids fishing in the river using poles supplied by an exhibitor. (One man landed a fish of about 15 inches to applause from crowd.) Several other vendors combined to supply kayaks to for people to try. There were too many, too spread out for me to get more than about a third of them in one picture. It made a colorful scene.

In addition, there were land exhibits from a variety of retailers in the fishing, boating and hiking lines, as well as conservation groups, youth groups, public health agencies, etc. Bicycles were available for trial on the same terms as the boats.

If you walk a little farther, you see a different sort of boat altogether. This one belongs to the Carnegie Science Center and was not part of the Vendor Outdoors event.

If you walk a little farther, you see a different sort of boat altogether.

Thinking about it afterward, I decided that this is the sort of event that only a tourist would find remarkable. We sometimes place too little emphasis on what happends in our own home towns. Great weather and everyone looked to be having a great time. I say kudos to everyone, not least to the City of Pittsburgh for building a really nice park.