We just couldn't pull a second all-nighter in a row to drive home, so we booked a hotel room so we could visit the Mercer Museum in Pennsylvania in the morning.

In the early 1900s, Mercer inherited a large amount of money and spent it collecting random memorabilia from pre-America industrial age. Then he needed a place to store his collection, so, without blueprints, he and a few buddies took a small concrete mixer and hand-built a castle. It stores barely a quarter of his entire collection, the larger pieces of which he would put in place on the current 'roof' and then pour concrete around them! So there's lots of windows opening into other rooms and skylights all over the place. It's surprisingly bright in the upper levels.

It's absolutely stuffed to the brim with random stuff from all walks of life and trade, from farming to coopering to blacksmithing to medicine to anything. There's an actual gallows on the fourth floor!

Then there's the main chamber, three stories tall, for the biggest stuff, like carriages, whaling boats, baskets, millstones, etc. It's mind-boggling. Some of the things I had only ever heard about, or never known about at all.

The Mercer Museum is definitely a must-see, if only for the oddities!