Day 50 - After Riding The Roller Coaster All Morning, We Were Ready For The Lunatic Asylum

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This morning we are off to the hills of West Virginia. The weather looks promising as we begin our journey west. We are actually doing a loop into West Virginia today and tomorrow before we rejoin Skyline Drive at Luray again and head south on Saturday. Since we were excited to get going and this hotel didn't have a free breakfast, we packed up the bike and were on the road by 8:00 with a stop at McDonald's for quick breakfast. Today we are headed for the Loony Bin - officially called the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum, it was in operation from 1858 to 1994 as the state mental hospital. Jody has been especially looking forward to visiting here since our trip began.

The Lunatic Asylum is located in Weston, WV about 175 miles west of Luray, and the Garmin Lady is estimating about 3.5 hours. What I didn't realize is just how great these roads would be on the motorcycle. You really can't just drive west in West Virginia without running into a lot of mountains. We started out by going back over US-211W and up and over the same mountain as we did yesterday. But then we turned onto US-33W which actually goes all the way to Weston. It was just luck that we picked this road as part of our trip, but it was easily the best motorcycle road of the trip so far. I had a hint that it might be good when I first noticed the purple switchbacks on the Garmin ahead and it was confirmed when I saw the traffic sign that said "High Crash Area Next 4 Miles". I told Jody to hold on as this was going to be good! I had picked up a sport bike behind me and he was having trouble keeping up, as the roads were full of twists and turns, first up the mountain and then down. There was very little traffic, and except for the sport bike behind me I pretty much had the road to myself. The turns were very well banked and most of the time I was in 3rd gear and occasionally 4th on a straightaway. The sign said 11% grade and that's pretty steep! It was just awesome!

When we reached the bottom, there wasn't much time to rest before we started climbing the next mountain. This repeated over and over all morning. There must have been 5 or 6 mountains to cross! We passed by several groups of motorcycle riders either stopped or going the other way. It was obviously a favorite ride for the locals. We did make a quick stop at a place called Seneca Rocks, but it didn't look like we could do anything there so we just took a couple of pictures and got back on the road. We never really had time to take another break the whole ride, and before we knew it we were in Weston and it was about 12:15. We just couldn't believe the size of the building! It looks like something out of an old horror movie. Luckily, they don't open until noon, so the parking lot wasn't too full.

It turns out the building was in use from 1858 until 1994 when the state shut it down and opened a new hospital down the road. It remained vacant until 2007 when a private couple bought it with the intention of restoring parts of it and using it for various commercial tourist applications. It took a while to raise the necessary funds and it looks like it just recently opened this year with the newly renovated portions. They do daily Historical and Paranormal Tours, and they have evening special events where you can explore the place at night in the dark, They recently had a nationwide BBQ cook-off on the front lawn that was a huge success. We signed up for the 4-Floor Tour and the Criminally Insane Tour.

The 4-Floor Tour goes through all 4 floors of the main building along with the first floor of a 1940's medical building behind the main building. There's a 1-Floor Tour that just tours the first floor of the main building, but after all we'd driven, we wanted to see it all! The Main Building is 4 stories tall, with the 4th floor rooms getting light from dormers through the roof. The Main Building has 242,000 sq ft under roof and is over 1250 feet long which is almost a 1/4 mile long building! It is build entirely of locally quarried cut sandstone and is the second largest cut sandstone building in the world, second only to the Kremlin in Russia. In the center above the Main Building is a large clock tower with a spire that reaches 200 ft tall. The restoration mostly addresses the residence apartments in the center of the main building where the superintendent and the nursing staff would live. There are some examples of patient's rooms, but most of that has been just cleaned up somewhat and left in it's original state making everything look just a little creepy.

Structurally the building is sound, and the roof is watertight. There is electricity in some of the building, but most of the lighting is just natural light. The front of the building intentionally faces east so there is plenty of morning sunlight from the eastern facing windows, and the back of the building faces west, so there is plenty of afternoon sunlight from the western facing windows. There is no air conditioning, but the ventilation is good and there are some fans for cooling. All in all, it was a little warm at times for some people, but us Floridians had no idea what heat people were complaining about.

The tourguide was great, very quiet and unassuming and maybe just a little creepy. He was a former corrections officer which which was sort of evident in his demeanor. He did know a lot about the history of the building and about the treatment of mental patients over the years. It took about 45 minutes to tour the 1st floor which had all the medical offices and facilities. There was even a morgue which still had one of the old body refrigerators in it. After the first floor tour we went upstairs to the second, third, and fourth floors, In the back, there was a large ballroom that they are now starting to use for functions. The building had been part of the local community for years up until its closure in 1994. Up until that time, the local high school played sports on the front lawn, and there were even several years when Senior Prom was held in the ballroom. This was while the rest of the building was being used as a mental hospital.

We finished up the 4-Floor Tour at about 2:30 and we were scheduled for the Criminally Insane Tour at 3:00, so we hung around a little and checked out the gift shop for t-shirts and also a small museum that had a display of patient art. We did some of this also while waiting for our initial tour. While we were waiting, we made conversation with a really nice redheaded lady in her 40's. She was really nice, and seemed to know a lot about the building and the local area. It wasn't until she said hi to us on the tour that the tourguide let us know that she and her husband were the owners.

In addition to the main building, there were a few other buildings on the 600 acre property. Most of these buildings were built in the 40's and 50's. There was the Medical Center which was where the doctor's offices and facilities were moved when taken out of the main building. There was another entire building known as the Tuberculosis Building which was where all mentally ill patients with tuberculosis from all over the state would come for quarantine. There was also a geriatric building that wasn't used for very long before it was turned into a warehouse. And there was a wall in the back where there once stood the Colored Asylum as in the early days, only white mentally ill people were allowed in the main building. After desegregation, the Colored Asylum building was torn down.

There was one last building called the Criminally Insane Building that we also toured at 3:00. This is an additional tour, and evidently Jody and I were the only ones who signed up for 3:00. We ended up with the exact same tourguide as the 4-Floor Tour, so it was close to a personal tour. The Main Building was only for the mentally ill who were either self-committed or committed by a family member. They did have a Violent Men's Ward and a Violent Women's Ward where people who were judged too dangerous to be among the general population were housed. But if, as the result of a crime, the court determined that you should be committed and that you were too mentally ill to go to a regular prison, the judge would send you to the Criminally Insane Building.

When we toured the Criminally Insane Building it was obvious right away that this was more like a jail than a mental hospital. The weird part about it was that most of the building was an open bay barracks style designed for about 15 men to a large room with a dayroom for activities. Being a former corrections officer, our tourguide was at a loss as to why they would use this style building to house the most dangerous of the criminally insane, and why it wouldn't be designed with individual cells. Our tourguide also told us stories of teh more legendary inmates and about some of the escapes.

It was after 4:00 when we finished our Criminally Insane Tour, so we made our last stop at the gift shop for t-shirts. They had the one I wanted in my size, but Jody had to settle for a white t-shirt to get it in a small. They do sell t-shirts online, so she may check back later when the inventory improves. From the Lunatic Asylum to the hotel was only 3 miles, so we hurried back, cleaned up and tried to find somewhere to eat. While Weston, WV seems to have every fast food restaurant known to man, regular restaurants were few and far between. Even though we had Mexican last night, we found a well rated Mexican place right next door to our hotel, so it was Mexican again, two nights in a row,

Tomorrow we head a little south and back east to a town called Cass, WV and the Cass Scenic Railroad. It's only about 90 miles away, and the train doesn't leave until 11:45 so we should be there in plenty of time.

184.0 Miles Today

7790.0 Miles Total

4.977 Gallons Today

197.781 Gallons Total

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