We finally got to one of the morning events early… too early… They were still setting up when we arrived. It’s been had to find a balance between early enough to get a decent place in the parking (because we’re released in the order we parked and if you’re way back in the pack sometimes you miss the police escort out of town. So you’ve missed having the traffic lights blocked and now you’re trapped in rush hour traffic.) and not too early that MINI isn’t ready for us yet.
We wandered around until things got started and we were finally able to play the bean bag toss game. Get two bags in and you win a prize… We didn’t win. Then we hit the breakfast bar. I didn’t want a repeat of yesterday, so I’d eaten a good breakfast at the hotel already. The caterers MINI had in Baltimore were excellent. They had a great dinner the night before and a really nice breakfast this morning. The had a ton of staff keeping everything stocked and neat and they even had big dispensers of fruit infused water. They served Make Your Own Breakfast Burritos… Which was awesome for GF and non-GF people… Just skip the flour wrap if you’re gf. Really nice. I hope MINI has more set ups like this.
We had an easier drive today. Mostly we stuck to the same road for long periods. The previous days we had lots of turn to look for… Today was easier… Just a couple main roads.
Our Surprise & Delight was actually pretty delightful today. We stopped at Mr Ed’s Elephant Museum & Candy Emporium MINI gave each car a take out box to fill with candies. We filled our box, but of course, had to check out the rest of the store. We got some fudge and a bag of double dipped chocolate peanuts. Brian kept telling me that they’d melt in the car…. Sometimes it’s like he doesn’t know me at all. Melt?! Not gonna have time for that!
We left Mr Ed’s with our collection of chocolate and wound our way through Virginia. We drove through Gettysburg and I made Brian stop at a few of the historic sites so I could take photos and thoroughly depress myself. Why must we always be killing each other?
The town of Gettysburg looked pretty interesting. I’d like to come back and actually spend some time looking around and learning more. That’s one of the nice things about MTTS… we get a chance to visit a lot of places that we wouldn’t normally have chosen as vacation destination. MTTS is sort of a ‘slampler’ of the states… try em out, see what you like… come back for a full course next time.
We had a nice drive into Pittsburg, PA. It’s really pretty here… I’m not sure what I expected, but I was surprised by the rolling hills and valleys and all the trees. I love the houses all stacked up the hillsides and all the bridges!
We stopped for dinner at Pastoli’s Pizza. Right on the front door, written in green, it says ‘Allergy Friendly Restaurant.’ Wow! I wish every place did that. ‘Allergy Friendly’ or ‘Run Away’. The pizza was delish! The gf crust was really crisp with a rich taste and nice texture.
After dinner we checked in at the MINI event so that we could take advantage of the nice parking… Then we walked back into the shopping/tourist area. I saw an incline trolley on our way in and I wanted to find it and go up the side of the mountain.
The view was amazing!
I’ve really enjoyed Pittsburg. It’s on our list to come back and visit sometime when we can spend more time exploring.
We missed most of the evening MINI event, but there really didn’t seem to be much going on… Loud music and some food… The food didn’t look near as good as the set up in Baltimore. With an hour still to go in the event many of the trays were empty and there were crumbs everywhere. I looked for bottled water, but couldn’t find any. I finally found some coolers of iced tea and lemonade that were nearly empty. One of the MINI guys tilted it over for me so I could get the last out of it.
Oh well… The morning and afternoon events were great and Brian and I entertained ourselves most of the evening anyway… I’m just annoyed that there wasn’t water… We did a lot of hiking!
Phoenix Rize Blog 