Our family took a little impromptu jaunt to Huntington, West Virginia yesterday and today. It was pretty funny trying to help Wesley figure out what we were doing. What he concluded was, "We are goin' to West Vir-Gin-Gin!" He calls my mom Gin-Gin, so I think he thought we would probably end up seeing her, but no such luck. It made me laugh every time he would say it.
The main reason for going was so that I could cross West Virginia off of my list of states to visit. My mom has always had the goal of visiting all 50 states in her lifetime, and I think it is a fun idea. It would be silly to have lived this close to WV all this time and never have driven the few hours to visit it. Plus, Wesley is a pretty big train fanatic right now since he would live and breathe Thomas the Train if we let him.
We left Tuesday afternoon and dropped Owen off at our friend's house for an overnight adventure with his doberman friend. We then headed on to Lexington to have a yummy lunch at Abuelo's. We had a very relaxed drive since both boys were either asleep the whole way or completely zoned out watching the highway happenings.
We got checked into our hotel, which was right on the Ohio river and right down the street from Marshall University. It is the hotel where the cast of We Are Marshall stayed during the filming. The hotel clerks were excited to tell John Mark all about Matthew McConaughey's room.
After getting settled, we went down to the river and explored. We saw some barges that were exciting for Wesley, but mainly we just enjoyed stretching our legs. It was a bit chippy.
We thought we might not see a whole lot of train stuff since we didn't find much to do in the area while looking online, so we thought this might be our best railroad experience...
Then we turned the corner and saw this!
...a huge black steam engine built in 1922 that you could climb in and around. Wesley did lots of little excited dances while checking it out.
We were all pretty sleepy, so we grabbed some dinner and then headed back to the hotel.
Wednesday morning, we enjoyed our complimentary hotel breakfast, then headed up to the room to pack up. As John Mark was changing Curtis' diaper, the LOUD fire alarm started going off. The cleaning women in the hall said they didn't know whether or not it was a drill, so we all scurried down eight flights of stairs, pantless Curtis in tow. Apparently someone had burned some toast at the buffet and that set off the alarm. Amazing. We got to see all sorts of things: frazzled women with their heads wrapped in towels, a firetruck with flashing lights and sirens blaring (another amazing experience for Wesley) and REAL firemen walk right past us. Wesley was filled with awe. Quite an adventure.
After we got checked out, we drove down to check out Marshall's campus a bit and then drove to the Railway Museum. It was closed for the season, but we still checked out some cool train stuff through the fence.
Our last stop on the way out of town was Heritage Farm Museum and Village. This was a fun spot, but we had a tired 2-year-old and didn't want to spend the $8 per person to do a tour, so they said we were just allowed to play on this little train playground. I'm pretty sure this was the highlight of the whole trip for Wesley. He "drove" Curtis and any other passengers he could imagine all around in the little train. He absolutely loved it.
It was a short but fun trip. Throughout today Wesley has continued to talk about the BIG steam engines, the fire alarm (he is excited to know that we have those in our house, too) and of course, West Vir-Gin-Gin.
