Sunday Afternoon Drive, on a Friday

Last Friday we were invited to attend the Pittsburgh Science Center as part of a charter school group. This was terribly fun and exciting, right up until Friday morning when I was heading toward Pittsburgh in the van with bad tires, and realized that I'd be in the heat of rush hour traffic on our way home.

I don't do city driving. It scares me. A lot.

I negotiated with the boys in the back seat on options for the day and we came up with a plan. We'd already packed a brown bag lunch for the Science Center (as per instructions) so decided to take that lunch to Mammoth Park, enjoy the playset and slide and have a picnic, then head to the fun get it super cheap store for back to school gear.

Mammoth is a fun place to spend some time, and it's right on the way to the mall, but it's just somewhere that we never stop. We should seriously remedy that. In fact, when I described to Luke where we were going he said, "so it's real? I thought it was a dream!" It's been that long since we've been there. They have an awesome slide that goes on forever and ever, but unfortunately the day we were there it wasn't that fast. And by it wasn't that fast I really mean they kinda slid down the steep parts, but on the flat parts they had to scoot themselves to get to the next drop off. There are days that the slide is so fast the kids have to have someone at the end to catch them, and we fear for Micah's life. It's 32 kinds of fun.

So when we were done at the park and decided it was time to hit the discount store, I programmed MALL into the GPS and we went on our merry way. We went over the river, through the woods, passed Grandmother's house and just kept on going. And going. And going. I think we saw the Energizer Bunny roaming the backroads at one point.

We turned off that road onto this one, then turned again, and drove through a junk yard. The cars were haphazardly parked on both sides of the road. Micah had sat quietly in the back of the car for the entire trip right up until the car graveyard. I have no idea where he thought he was, but boy-howdy was it exciting. He pointed and Ooohed and Aaahed and tapped Josh to be sure that he saw it, too.

Weird.

Take the boy to a slide down an entire hillside and he plays quietly. Drive through a junk yard and it's the best attraction since Disney.