I have toured the Richmond area from Fredericksburg to St. Petersburg looking at 18th & 19th Century residential homes many times. In Richmond itself that includes downtown, West Richmond, and Monument Ave. These include plantation homes along the James River, but not Williamsburg, that is a 1920’s reconstruction by the Rockefeller Foundation. I have another album just of Williamsburg. I also have visited Abingdon, Alexandria, Charlottesville, Lynchburg, Norfolk, and Orange Co. in Virginia. In Maryland, I visited Annapolis and Chesterton. I lived on the Severn River north of Annapolis before the state capital became too crowded to be enjoyable.

I recently watched the 6-part biopic on the artist Andy Warhol on Netflix. It reminded me of a trip to Pittsburgh. He grew up there, but he lived most of his life in New York. His museum is in the West End in Pittsburgh close to the sports arenas and other museums. The city hosts five professional sports teams.

Of course, Pittsburgh was built on steel. But the furnaces are gone now, and they are replaced with arts and entertainment venues. At one time the area had more than 300 steel-related businesses and 446 bridges. The downtown sits at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers that form the Ohio River, and the rivers still carry a large volume of barge traffic. Between 1970 and 1990 the population dwindled in half, but then it stabilized as health care, education, and technology companies moved it.

Key West is no longer the quaint little town that it was for most of the 19th & 20th Centuries. Although it still contains the Naval Air Station, the submarine base was moved so the community is dependent primarily upon tourism. It is located at the southernmost point of the US at the end of a long string of islands. It first was connected by a rail line, a highway, and then by Pan American Airlines that was formed here. It had a reputation as an arts colony of writers and artists and a welcoming community for the LGBTQ+ folks.

The tourist trade got a major increase with the construction of two piers capable of handling the new super cruise ships that would dump 10,000 people a day on the short Duval St. Recently, the town has limited the size of the cruise ships that will be allowed to dock to try to relieve some of the overcrowding.