Last Saturday, I woke up well rested and with nothing that needed to be done. It was the perfect beginning of a road trip day. I had recently rediscovered an informational card in my desk for the Museum of American Glass down in Weston, WV, so that was my destination. My phone said I could be at the museum in less than three hours, and it wasn’t even 7 a.m. yet. All systems were go, so I did. I threw some things in a little gym bag, just in case; fixed myself some AG1 in lemonade; and got into the car.

Now, here’s my first favorite part of a road trip day: starting the car—not to go to the gym or to the Giant Eagle for groceries or to one of the two national big box hardware stores to buy yet again the wrong things that are enthusiastically recommended by staff that have never done a project like mine. No. This already sunny Saturday morning, I get to go on a road trip. It doesn’t matter in the least that I’ll pull back into my driveway, exhausted, at the end of a long day. Right now, I’m going on an adventure.

Highway 79, once I cross the city to get to it, is a pretty straight shot south to Morgantown, WV, and it then angles southwest all the way to Charleston. But I don’t need to go that far. As I drive south, there’s a little Saturday morning traffic around the city, but the farther away from Pittsburgh I get, the longer are the stretches in which I have the highway to myself. This is why I absolutely love driving on a weekend morning.

As I near the border, there is a mist hanging over the hills. Where the trees crowd in to line the highway, I can only see it topping off the hills in the distance ahead. But where the trees pull away from the road to reveal a smooth green slope off to my right, lit by the early morning sun and serving as a backdrop to a group of houses in a hollow among the hills, the mist is lower down.

I get off the highway outside Morgantown for gas and a bathroom and then I ask my phone for directions to the city. I just want to see what it looks like. When my phone announces that I have arrived, I am at the Morgantown Farmer’s Market. It’s the first kiss of the serendipity that will return again and again today. The downtown I drove though was multiple blocks of old brick buildings, rising block above block up the hill from the Monongahela River.

This small city looks alive and well. Not surprising, dominated as it is by the double campuses of West Virginia University. Literally, a tram system was built to connect the two areas of the university, one of which is in town at the top of the hill rising from the river and the other, including a stadium, is out near the exit from Highway 79. This cute college town is definitely worth a future trip. But today, I’m going farther south to Weston, and it’s time to get back on the highway.

I found the museum easily and parked alongside the street next to a small, neatly mowed field with a canopy in the center sheltering a square, folding table, two folding chairs, a man, and a sign reading, Men’s Prayer Room. Yes. That’s what the sign said.

I’m not going to take up your time with a lot of information about the glass museum, other than it’s free and very much worth going to see if you have any interest. Actually, it’s so well done that even if you are dragged there by a friend or relative, you might find something that catches your eye. They have a collection of marbles that astounded me. Space has been given to glass eyes made for dolls, glass insulators, a research library, and old glass bottles, among many other things. Of course, the expected tableware occupied most of the space. I love Depression-era glass. It’s one of the reasons I am unable to drive by an antique shop. Anyway, let’s move on to some more awesome serendipity.

I decide to get lunch. It’s 11 a.m., and I’ve been running on AG1 all morning. It’s time for something I can chew. I ask my phone for nearby diners and get some blah sounding places plus the Olde Mill Diner. I can’t even call it a decision; the Olde Mill Diner was the only possible choice. Every single word conjured delightful images of a large old log cabin converted to a restaurant with seating purchased at a 1950s auction of equipment and fixtures from a defunct diner, waitresses named Flo and Betty with ruffle-edged aprons tied at the waist, and a big Denny’s/Eat N Park (depending on which coast you’re on) style menu. Oh, and it would have had to be an old mill, so naturally there would be a stream and even, if luck was with me, a mill wheel.

I’m following directions to the restaurant and, turning right at an intersection, I see a beautiful, four-story, cut sandstone building set in park like grounds on my left. The building is longer than any I’ve ever seen before and seems to be the main part of a compound that includes some old brick buildings behind it. Then I see the sign. Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum and below that: Tours. I should have gone straight across the intersection to get to the entrance, but an abrupt left turn into an alley to change direction also works. I drive through the gates and up to a parking lot in front of the building on one side of the grand portico entrance with its columns and double doors. I was going to describe the parking lot as small, but it wasn’t. It was just dwarfed by the building.

When I said it was huge…it’s the second-largest cut sandstone building in the world. Yes, in the entire world. And it’s in the very small town of Weston, West Virginia. What’s the largest? The Kremlin. In Moscow.

I sign up for the longest tour they offer—a 90-minute, general tour that is longer than and includes more of the building than any of the others. But I had to sign a waiver first. I didn’t read it, but I’m sure it had to do with the decrepit condition of the building and possibly the fact that there are stairs to climb instead of elevators to whisk us up to the upper floors and maybe also the shock inducing horror stories that were psychiatric medicine in the 1800s and well into the 1900s. I’m sharing the tour in photos below. Enjoy.

Finally, tour ended, I’m back on the road, even more hungry now, and headed once again for the Olde Mill Diner. Remember the image that would naturally bring to mind? After driving well into the back country of West Virginia, I arrived at an intersection with a gas station on one side opposite an auto related business across the street, and nothing else but a few homes spread around some pretty countryside. My phone told me to turn right and, the instant I did so, added that I had arrived. Obviously, it was mistaken. It wouldn’t be the first time, either. There have been previous lapses, although, in all honesty, nothing of this magnitude. I kept driving, only to find myself more firmly in the countryside, so naturally I turned around to enquire at the gas station.

I walked in the door and noticed a few tables in a small space to my right and the expected convenience store to my left. A sudden dreadful idea struck, and I turned right. Sure enough, it was a restaurant. I could tell by the menu on two sheets of 8 1/2×11 paper taped side by side to the top of a folding table behind which stood a mother and son awaiting my order. The menu offered a hamburger, cheeseburger, hotdog, French fries, and a small selection of ice cream novelties. What choice did I have? It was 2 p.m. in the afternoon, and I hadn’t had had a thing since I woke up except for a powdered supplement in lemonade to mask the taste of grainy medicinal greens.

I ordered a hotdog and fries and was told that I would need to go to the convenience store side to pay for same. I added a medium lemonade in a generously sized cup from the fountain there and a chocolate chip cookie for $1.99. My total for hotdog, fries, drink, and cookie was less than $6. I advised the cashier politely that there must be some mistake. There wasn’t. Welcome to back country West Virginia.

Back in the Olde Mill Diner, I sat at one of the four tables. I had a choice since only one other table was occupied. By the way, I never did ask about the name of the establishment since, by then, I was too hungry to care. Besides, I was much more concerned by the nearly dead battery in the phone I depended on to guide me back to Pennsylvania. The woman behind the makeshift counter could not possibly have been more friendly and helpful. She had my phone plugged into a wall socket near my table in an instant and shortly afterwards, her son delivered my hotdog and a small pile of the least greasy fries I’ve ever had in my entire life. The Olde Mill Diner notwithstanding, I consider that lunch another instance of serendipity.

Lunch finished, I was tired and ready to go home. I’d woken up around six and was driving by seven. Imagine my dismay then, when going around a curve in the road not a mile from the gas station, I find Jackson’s Mill, an enclave that belonged to Stonewall Jackson’s family and which he lived on as a child, and I’m too tired to stop. For so many reasons, I will return to West Virginia.