Wheeling, West Virginia

Our first visit was the West Virginia Independence Hall which was built in 1859 as a federal custom house. It has served as the home of the pro-Union conventions of Virginia in 1861, the capitol of Virginia from June 1861 to June 1863, and the site of the first constitutional convention for West Virginia. The Renaissance Revival-style structure is a National Historic Landmark. Our second visit was the Kruger Street Toy and Train Museum. It has thousands of toys and trains dating back many decades. There are operational train layouts where the kids could press buttons to get them going and some toy layouts where you could play with the layouts and trains. Owen and Milton had a lot of fun. Owen loved the real train outside the museum. We also visited the childrens museum in Wheeling itself which was just toys for the kids to play with, another kit with the boys. The bridge out of Wheeling spans the main channel of the Ohio River and was the largest suspension bridge in the world from 1849 until 1851. It was part of the National Road. Also running through Wheeling was the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. We stayed at the McLure Hotel which was built in 1852. At least 11 presidents have been guests, including Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Nixon. The original building was demolished, and an extensive renovation of the hotel was completed in 1985. It was once managed by the Ramada hotel chain, but that has since been removed. You can still see the weathering outlining the old hotel name on the front of the building. The hotel has definitely seen better days. Driving home we stopped at the Cabelas store which was enormous.  The center of the store had a 2-story taxidermy animal display and the back of the store had a play shooting range.