West Virginia

So tuesday brought following david and his gf up to weston wv to trans allegany lunatic asylum, a kirkbride that is open daily for tours. yay for legal access. it was my first aslyum and first kirkbride i’ve ever been in. we took the 4 floor tour, and got to see a lot of the building (but not any of the out buildings like the TB and general hospitals). it was interesting, and pretty, but in way better shape than i was expecting. and i don’t really know why i expected it to be more ruined, since i saw it on ghosthunters last summer. i departed from them after the tour and headed to moundsville/wheeling to go to WV state penn. only problem is that google maps lies. they sent me the “quickest” way, which was directly across all the mountains instead of going all highway. while the road was fun (dad would love it) and it was pretty (though raining), no way was it quicker than if i had gone all highway. so i didn’t make it into town in time for the last penn tour boo. drove up to wheeling and found the wheeling island casino. i was going to get a room there, but turns out they were sold out. what? on a tuesday? eh that’s ok, they were expensive anyway. i did run into an ex coworker, which was a complete surprise because last anyone at work had known he was down in the carolinas attempting to flip houses. well that didn’t work out for him hahah, bad economic timing. left there and got a room in downtown wheeling for the night.

thursday it was back to wv state penn just missing the 11am tour, but that was ok because it was a big middle school field trip. no thanks. lady at the counter says the noon tour was a field trip too, so i had to wait til 1 cuz no way was i going along with a bunch of kids. i had passed a sign for the Marx Toy Museum so i headed there to kill some time. marx toys went out of business in 1980 so i didn’t have any, but they were the company who made rock em sock em robots, and invented the big wheel. neat stuff to look at, and nice lady took me through the whole place (not sure if that is normal or not, i was the only one there). back to the prison again, and there were only 3 of us on the tour. nice. older man who was our guide ends up being the husband of the lady at the toy museum lol. tour was about an hour long, through a few cell blocks, the yard, cafeteria etc. again, much better shape than i was expecting but then again it was only closed since the mid 90s. i think i was expecting more like Eastern State.

headed out after the tour for home. took a long way so i could go to sonic again hahahahah. got home just before 8. wicked headache that won’t go away tho.

and i have to say, yay for legal access to buildings, but i think i prefer self tours…both weston and the prison would have been better if i could wander on my own like you can at Eastern State. spend however much time you want looking at whatever you want and taking as many pics as you could. in the end i don’t think i took very many photos at either site because the guide wanted you to move along with the group (even tho both groups were small). both trips to eastern state were way more relaxed and i could spend hours there. i’ve been thinking about this a lot in regards to the terminal too. i think we may be getting to the point where we’ll want to have some basic open hours but not necessarily with a tour guide…i don’t see why we couldn’t offer both (open a few days a week, a real tour once a month as we do now). maybe the open hours is just the concourse, and the tour goes other extra areas. i don’t know. but the open hours would allow for photographers and others to have the time they need, and the tours for people who want more in depth discussion of the building’s history.

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