Pittsburgh, PA and the Monongahela River

Total Miles Traveled 1278

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Our plan to explore the Monongahela River was to visit the small river towns along the way and pass through the last two locks of navigable waters on the river.  Timing the weather and lock operations was the real challenge as the last two locks, the Hildebrand and the Opekiska locks, are only operated eleven days this year.   During our cruise, our only opportunity to pass through the locks is a one-day operation on August 22.  The Opekiska Lock has a twenty-two-foot lift at 857 feet above sea level.  It is the highest elevation of water in North America from where a vessel can cruise and reach the ocean.  We departed Key West Florida on the Atlantic Ocean March 14^th and passed through the Opekiska Lock on August 22^nd.

On Thursday August 12^th, we departed South Side Marina at Pittsburgh and traveled 30 miles to Monongahela City, PA.  The river and city are referred to locally as the “Mon River” and “Mon City”.  We tied to the wall of the Aquatorium, which is a 3000-seat amphitheater style venue built on the river.  There were no concerts scheduled during our stay, but this would be a back stage pass for sure.  It’s amazing the little know facts you learn from these small towns.  This was the home of former governor of Indiana, Mitch Daniels and NFL quarterback Joe Montana.

A few views traveling up the Mon,  the hills just rise up from the river, an awesome river to cruise on.

Although the temperatures are in the upper 60's at night, morning fog is almost an every day occurrence.  Some of the hills going up the Mon are over 1000 ft above sea level.

 

We cruised 34 miles up the Mon to Millsboro, PA at the Holiday Harbor Marina, then on August 15^th cruised 36 miles to Morgantown, WV.  The weather has been unstable the past few days with pop up thunderstorms and hurricane Fred has made landfall in the Gulf and is on track to pass through our area in a few days. 

We are at the solid blue dot at the top of the cone.

Morgantown was a great place to stop for several days, a nice dock, close to town, and many restaurants to choose from.  The downside was no marinas and no power or water at the docks.

The Morgantown Aquatorium

The city dock is on the left just below the Morgantown Lock, our home for a few days.

We found a rooftop restaurant that provided a great view of our boat and Morgantown.

Not only is Morgantown the home of West Virginia University, it was also the birthplace of Don Knotts.

Mountain State Brewing Company has a pretty good local beer and the wood fired pizza oven makes good pizza too.

We've seen a few wood fired pizza ovens but this is the biggest one so far.

On August 21^st we passed through the Morgantown Lock and anchored a mile or so downriver from the Hildebrand Lock.  We have found that anchoring is a real challenge on this river.  The riverbed is rock and its hard to set the anchor when it just bounces off the bottom for several yards.  My other concern is the anchor getting wedged in the rocks and not being able to retrieve it.

We weighed anchor on August 22^nd and passed through the Hildebrand and Opekiska locks.  I would have liked to continue to Fairmont, WV but considering the locks are only open for one day, we didn’t want to take a chance of not getting back through.  The last two days the locks will be operated this year are September 4^th and 5^th.  

Approaching the Hildebrand Lock.

We anchored at mile 117 for an hour or so, ate our lunch, then started our return down the Mon to Old Lock #7 wall at mile 85.  We attempted to anchor on the Cheat River but after several failed attempts to set the hook we decided to continue down river.  A busy day of passing through 6 locks and traveling 43 miles.

Old Lock #7 lock wall.

Views on the Monongahela River

On August 23^rd we departed Lock #7, cruised 53 miles back to Monongahela, Pa and then 29 miles on August 24th back to South Side Marina at Pittsburgh.  We will stay here for two days to provision and prepare for our journey back down the Ohio River on Thursday August 26^th.   

Pittsburgh, PA and Allegheny River

Total Miles Traveled 1047

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Our stay at Fox Chapel Marina started out a busy one.  My annual scheduled engine room maintenance was due, and we had a raw water pump failure on the port engine on the way up the Ohio River.  Fox Chapel Marina is Pittsburgh’s only full-service marina with 360 slips along the Allegheny River and a well-stocked ship’s store.  Although I didn’t need any of their services, they did have a good price on a few spare parts that I purchased.  The Baja Bar and Grill is located at the marina, a great place to relax, have a cold drink, and watch the boats travel along the river.

Jeff Decker was our harbor master and he was very helpful during our stay.  Jeff invited us to a dock party on their pier to meet some of the boaters at the marina.  This is an awesome grill; the smoke even comes out of the exhaust pipes.

Our friends Bob and Deb from Indiana had their boat in the shop this week, so since they had a planned vacation, they drove out to spend a few days with us exploring the Allegheny and Pittsburgh. We departed Fox Chapel Marina on August 3^rd and passed through three locks on the Allegheny to an anchorage at Murphey’s Island.  The river narrows as we continued upriver with the hills rising from the shoreline. 

The locks in this area do not have floating bollards, instead the lockmaster lowers a hook from above, we attach one line to the boat and hold the other end as he raises the line and places it on a hook.  We have a line on the bow and stern.  As the water level in the lock raises or lowers, we keep the line tight to keep the boat from floating around in the lock.   

We had originally planned to continue up the Allegheny to Lock #7, but found Lock #6 is only open on the weekends and if we continued, we would have had to wait a week to return.  We weighed anchor at Murphy’s Island on August 4^th, locked back through Lock #5, and tied up to a city dock at Freeport, PA.

Freeport was laid out as a town in 1796 by David Todd and was declared that “no dockage fee will ever be charged to tie up a raft, boat, or barge”, in 1833 the town was chartered as Freeport, PA.  We spent the day visiting the town but were disappointed that most restaurants and bars were closed until 3 p.m...  We walked about a mile to the only place open, the Rainbow Inn, and ate our lunch in a smoke-filled bar with mediocre food and service.  We did enjoy the stop though; the dock was very nice with a park setting and easy access to town.

Diesel Fuel has been hard to find coming up the Ohio and Pittsburgh areas, most of the boats here are gasoline engines.  I talked to someone at Fox Chapel, and they gave me contact information for a fuel truck delivery business at Sharpsburg which was on our way back to Pittsburgh.  We scheduled fuel delivery at the boat ramp, we pulled up as close to the ramp as possible, and the fuel truck backed down the ramp so his hose would reach us.  We were able to purchase diesel fuel at $2.79 a gallon so the inconvenience was well worth it. 

After fueling we cruised down the Allegheny River to Pittsburgh then entered the Monongahela River.  Pittsburgh is known as the City of Bridges which has 446 bridges crossing three major rivers and countless hills and ravines.

We arrived at the South Side Marina on August 5^th, giving us better access to the Pittsburgh area. 

We decided to take the Hop on Hop off open top tour bus to see the sites and history of downtown Pittsburgh and its boroughs.

We visited the Duquesne Incline originally completed in 1877 and steam powered, it has been refitted with electric motors and a cable system.  It is located on Pittsburgh's South Side and was originally used to carry cargo and passengers up and down Mt Washington.

 

A spectacular view of the city, the Allegheny River on the left and the Monongahela River on the right with the cable car pictured below.

We ate lunch at one of the restaurants overlooking the city.....

We stopped by Station Square but found that the shops and entertainment complex was closed for renovation.  During the early 1900's Pittsburgh was the nations 8th largest city accounting for between on-third and on-half of the nations steel output.

We visited the Grand Concourse restaurant, a preserved building constructed in 1898 by the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie  Railroad Station.  The architecture and detail of this building is amazing.

We continued our "Hop on Hop off" tour of Pittsburgh.

The architecture and detail of some of the old buildings is amazing.....a lost art for sure.  

 

More than 229,000 people drive through the Liberty, Fort Pitt, Squirrel Hill and Stowe tunnels each day!  This is the Armstrong Tunnel which has twin bores bending half way through and has a pedestrian walkway on the western side.  

There is not a lot of flat area for housing, I would guess the locals are in pretty good shape.

Especially if they use the stairs from one level to the next......

The US Steel Tower is a 64 story skyscraper, it is the tallest building in Pittsburgh, contains over 44,000 tons of structural steel, and almost an acre of office space per floor.  Currently the largest tenant of the building is UPMC, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, which occupies 500,000 square feet of office space. 

The Alcoa Building was the original headquarters for the Aluminum Company of America.  The unique aluminum walls of the building are 1/8 inch thick.  Also a unique radiant heating and cooling system is contained in the ceiling:  since there are no pipes, radiators, or air conditioning units along the exterior walls.  The windows rotate 360 degrees so they can be washed from the inside.

South Side Marina, our boat is visible at the far end in the middle of the pier.

The Gulf Tower can be seen from our dock at the marina.   The entire step-pyramid structure at the top of the building is illuminated with changing colors to provide a weather forecast that can be seen for miles away.  The 42nd-44th floors indicate the temperature, the 41st floor indicates the precipitation, the 40th floor represents the humidity, and the 39th floor indicates wind speed.

We plan to stay at Pittsburgh a few more days exploring the area before heading up the Monongahela River.