Thursday Doors – Pittsburgh Leftovers

A busy couple of weeks, and a door research project that yielded more questions than answers has left me without the doors I was planning to share today. So, like any good little protégé of Norm, I’m reaching into the junk drawer of door photos for a few good photos that failed to make the editor’s cut on an earlier post.

The title is clear, today’s doors are left over from the various door posts that resulted from the family gathering in Pittsburgh last November. Faith and I drove to Pittsburgh from Connecticut, while my brother drove over from Iowa. After a little more than 48 hours of eating, drinking, cheering and sighing the deep sigh that only losing to Dallas can cause, we all headed home.

I explained most of the doors in the captions. You can click on any photo in the gallery to start a slide show. That way, if you’d rather just look and move onto the other doors, you can. If you want to full experience, the story behind the doors, the upgrade to First Class, click on a photo. If you don’t quite know what to make of this post, if you’re new to Thursday Doors, let me explain:

Each week, the master door photographer, Norm Frampton, virtually beckons his followers to join him in a quest to find and catalogue all the interesting doors on earth. If you want to see this week’s collection, saunter on over to Norm’s place. Look at his doors (to see how it’s done) and then look for the blue frog. Click that little tadpole and join the world of doors. Add your doors if you’re so inclined.

As for the featured door, some explanation may be required. Kennywood is an amusement park outside of Pittsburgh. It opens in May and stays open in some form, until October. That has nothing to do with this door. This is the inside of the Men’s Room door at Eat’n Park. “Kennywood’s open” was (and apparently still is) one of the ways fathers would tell their male children that their zipper is down.

In addition to the main gallery of doors, there is a separate smaller gallery of our transverse of Mt. Washington via the Fort Pitt Tunnel. The Pittsburgh terminus of the tunnel is often referred to as Pittsburgh’s Front Door. I think I’ve shared a photo of that before. If you want the entire experience, you can skip the gallery and watch the video at the bottom (1:46).

Welcome to the Fort Pitt Tunnel – a 3,614 feet (1,102 m) long shortcut through Mt. Washington.

Keep going. there’s an exit up there somewhere.

Drive toward the light

Step inside the front door

The doors gallery spans the entire trip. There are photos from the drive down, several from the different places we visited (not including those previously shared) and a couple from our ride home. I included one of PPG Paints Arena, since the Penguins enter the second round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs tonight, and I included Eat’n Park, because it is Faith’s favorite attraction, other than perhaps, Heinz Field

Gotta love those big red doors

Faith at Eat’n Park in Dubois, PA, on the way to Pittsburgh.

Not the doors Faith wanted to see when she took over driving. This is what I-80 looks like in PA. A few slow trucks passing a few slower trucks.

Not sure what they’re building but that looks like a door and those are clearly cranes. This is just inside New York on our way down.

The vacant lot is where my maternal grandmother lived. The house was home to an Aunt and two of my favorite cousins.

PPG Paints Arena. The doors open in about 15 minutes. Let’s Go Pens

Eat’n Park in Squirrel Hill

Faith at Eat’n Park in Squirrel Hill. On the way out of Pittsburgh

Every Eat’n Park has this inside the Men’s Room

We parked on this street when I went to get pictures of Allegheny General Hospital

This is a side door to the University of Pittsburgh Art Gallery

This is either a door to the Carnegie Library or the Carnegie Museum. The buildings run together.

Doors to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History

Roadside barn on the way home.

Ride with us through the tunnel. It’s OK, Faith is driving.