Every year, we take a family trip out of town for our anniversary at the end of August. This year, it coincided with Hurricane Irene. We originally planned to go to Ocean City, MD however, this was directly in the path of the storm and made a decision to go elsewhere. So, the day before we were supposed to leave, we canceled our trip to Ocean City and that evening we had to plan for a new location. We knew the destination had to be: 1) Out of the storm's path, 2) Drivable in a day and 3) Has a mix of kids and adult things to do. After an hour or so of looking, we landed on Pittsburgh.

Neither of us had been before so our expectations were low. We did some additional research in the car using our iPhone, something that wasn't even feasible not so long ago. We packed several things into the trip for such a short time (we were there for 2 full days, not including driving time). We went on a cruise that had a pirates theme. As you can see from the picture above, Emersyn was into it! We also went on an inclinator up a large mountain to get some great pictures (that's where I got the pano at the top of this post - its about 15 shots stitched in Photoshop). Finally, we took a ride around the city on a "ducky tour". Pretty fun time and we made it in and out of the water on this "boat" without a hitch.

6 hours drive in, 2 days there and 6 hours back to fortunately find our house in the same condition we left it in after the storm. Sweet.