WIFEY AND I HAVE BEEN DOING SOME TRAVELING THIS SUMMER, so expect a few travelogue columns. We didn’t go to Rome, Paris, Athens or Prague. We traveled, as usual, to rural Pennsylvania, to the Allegheny National Forest and my little hometown of Ridgway. From there we took spur-route tours.

I collected quite a few good stories in memory while traveling, and I still have a few of them left.

We brought people with us this trip, Bud and Sandy Donaldson. Bud, a retired BUSD teacher, loves carpentry and woodworking, so I knew he’d enjoy our forested town with its sawmills and chainsaw carvers. Retired teacher Sandy is always up for a good time, city or country, so she fits well into any event. They do a lot of traveling on their own and use Airbnb.

A few months ago, when the four of us in the midst of dinner and drinks decided to vacation together, we explained to them how we use Ridgway as a home base, then look for East Coast events to attend. We were contemplating the Chautauqua Summer Seminars, but they take place in July, past our adventure window, so we were postponing them until retirement. “What could we do there?” was the question on the table.

Within a few days, we were fielding calls from Bud and Sandy. They had found a Brew Festival in downtown Toronto with a neighboring Blues Festival two blocks away. “Wanna go?”

“Sure.” They booked four nights with Airbnb on Lake Ontario in a two-bedroom apartment attached to a private home with a lake-side cabana and two kayaks.

The drive would take an afternoon. Toronto is only 220 miles from Ridgway, the distance to the Atlantis in Reno. Our route had Amish farms, New York wineries, and Niagara Falls in between.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Toronto was awesome, but I first need to talk about Pittsburgh and our good times there. Let’s move the story south.

Susan asked the travel website to plop us in the middle of the action, the swingingest region in Pittsburgh. The algorithm put us on the Southside at the 10th Street Bridge.

We arrived early on a Monday morning by $50 cab from the airport, jetlag goofy and our room not ready. We checked our bags and walked 15 blocks up East Carson Street and back down the other side.

Now, let me tell you, brothers and sisters, you may have been down happy-time streets in San Francisco, or the East Bay, or New York, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Honolulu, or the South Pacific, but you have seen nothing like East Carson Street in Pittsburgh for sheer volume in the number of bars and restaurants per stumbling foot.

We’d walked only a few blocks before I realized I was witnessing something unique. I whipped out my camera. That means I’m serious; otherwise, I’d use my phone. I had to chronicle this street. Who would believe me, otherwise? As we walked along, in the early-morning hours while the shops were all closed, I took 54 pictures. That’s an average of more than three nightclubs per block.

They had great names like Blind Pig, Fat Head, Devils and Dolls, Work, Diesel, Sky Bar, and Jimmy D’s. Primanti Brothers is there and the Pittsburgh Steak Company, big guys in the eating business.

While reading the monster Headwich selection on the Fathead window menu, the owner saw us and came outside. He was cleaning. We asked what it was like at night. “In the summer,” he said, “on the weekends, it looks like Mardi Gras out here. People are pouring into the street. The place is packed. We make a hell of a Headwich and serve local craft beer.”

We promised to come back after dark, and we did, but first comes the day. I’m eager to describe our afternoon ride back to the hotel from the far end of town.

Once we got our hotel room situated we went for another walk, this time over the bridge to the north. We wanted to attend the annual Three Rivers Arts Festival back at the area we stayed in last summer when the travel algorithm plopped us at the confluence of the three rivers.

Live music played in the park, surrounded by 250 little white tents full of homemade thingamabobs. A half-hour walk got us there. We did the loop, walked to the point and stood before the towering fountain, looking across at Heinz Field.

After strolling among the tents, we walked 18 blocks up Penn Avenue past all of those bars and restaurants, the same ones we had enjoyed the year before. They are plentiful and more upscale perhaps, but not as condensed as on East Carson.

After walking over 50 blocks in a day, we decided to catch a ride back to the hotel. The $50 cab ride was still stinging my fingertips, so I decided to join Uber.

I downloaded the phone app, put in my PayPal number, and requested a ride. Bling! I got a text from a driver, along with photos of him and his car, a Corolla. “I’m seven minutes away,” he said. I clicked Accept. He showed up on time and took us to our hotel for $8. We like Uber. We met them again in Toronto.

After hotel showers and shinola, we went stepping out for food and frivolity along East Carson. We did wing samplings all down the street and ended with monster Headwiches. I told the barkeeper at the end of the night, “Do you know, I counted 54 bars and restaurants in 15 blocks.”

“There are over 120,” he said. “You missed the side streets.”

Steve Gibbs teaches at Benicia High School and has written a column for The Herald since 1985.