Motoring Challenge

How could our Washington County Kentucky picture get any better? Donna asked sort of offhandedly to our gathered County Extension Agent staff, “Does any farm around here have emus?”

“Doesn’t so & so have..” “..they don’t any more.” “I think Brenda still does. “Who?” “The woman up on the hill.” “Do you think she’d be open for a visit?” “I’ll call.” “What’s her last…oh, here she is.”

The younger of the Price is Right models calls her up, explains who she is and asks if she could send some people up to look at her emus. Her heads nods up and down, then she launches into a shortened version of my explanation of the Challenge. She hangs up and says Brenda would love for us to come over and visit her emus. They give me the address and I plug it into the GPS. We get brief directions to get us started and we are off.

The weather is still misty, so the top is still up and the wipers are on intermittent. We are slowly driving down the road looking at mailboxes for the address. We get where the numbers are way too big so I do a u-turn. We head back, now driving at 20 MPH. The GPS says you have arrived and I see the address number we are looking for. I pull in a very nice new concrete driveway, it even has 3′ high concrete walls over the culvert. Fifty yards later I stop in a big parking pad. Donna says, “I don’t think this is it.” “Me either,” I say, “But the address is right, the mailbox said 2350.” That’s when she says, “It was 2320.” Me, “Oops!” I turn around and drive back to the street.

This time we spot the mailbox that has 2320 on it and turn in. It looks to be a shared drive and we start up. Where the road splits we met up with a red pick up coming down the road. We roll down windows and he asks, “Are we the folks looking for emus?” I say we sure are, so he says he is going out to pick up some dinner, but his wife is waiting for us up at the house. Before he drives off, he asks if we want to take one or all of the emus with us when we go home.

After parking we are greeted by a quite friendly older lady. She and her retired Marine husband moved back to the area where she grew up and bought this bit of land, a hundred thousand dollar house with the million dollar view. I think she got it right, they do have a beautiful view of the surrounding countryside. Brenda & hubby got into emus in their heyday so they could raise them for meat and the eggs. At one time they had almost 75 of the birds. But like everyone else, they soon found out that raising emus wasn’t going to turn into a goldmine.

They sold them all off except for the last 4, Romeo & Juliet and another pair, Bob & Edna¹, named for her crazy aunt and uncle. She asks if we would like to feed them, I say “I’d love to.” Donna not so much. Brenda gets a couple genuine farm sized feed scoops filled with Purina Giant Chicken Chow, hands me one while she takes the other and we lean over the fence. In short order we are joined by 3 of the four emus and a couple of llamas. They really are big birds up close, but they aren’t aggressive unless you are a piece of grain or a pellet of grain by-products, then look out.

We swap stories until the scoops are empty, we thank her profusely for her hospitality and prepare to take our leave. On the way down the hill on their driveway, the husband is on his way back up with dinner, as we pass, we wave. I’m not sure, but I thought I saw a frown form as he realized we didn’t have any emus in the car with us.

Ever since the middle of August when we heard that the bonus photo with regular farm animals was worth 2 points, but if you could get one with emus in it it would be worth 3 points, we have been always on the look out for those elusive birds. The Emu Vigilance Alert went from Yellow to Orange for our driving vacation. If you weren’t driving or actively plotting a course on the paper map or GPS you were to be scanning the skies for emus.

On the first Wednesday of our trip we started in downtown Parkersburg, West Virginia with breakfast at the Crystal Cafe before crossing the bridge into Ohio. The bulk of the morning was spent driving, ever vigilant, through the Buckeye State until we crossed the Ohio River again, this time on a ferry, into Kentucky.

The next couple of hours were spent driving the back roads along ridges and though hollows, all the while with our eyes on the darkening clouds, expecting it to start raining at any minute. In between we squeezed in an easy visit to the 4th least populous state capital (and smallest of the 5 we have visited) before zeroing in on finding just the right spot for the Washington County Kentucky photo.

Some Washington County photos were planned in advance before we left home using an internet search & then GSV and some were planned the night before the same way. For Kentucky we had done neither, so we were relying on the Garmin Auto GPS by for searching the words “Washington County.” One of the results that popped up in Springfield, the county seat, was the county circuit court on the way into town, because the County Court building is usually a big ol’ impressive building I said, “Let’s go there first.”

The GPs wanted us to turn on the unlikely (for a courthouse) named street, Industrial Road, but because of my brain’s conversion error between 500′ and actual distance, I turned on the wrong road. We ended up in an Industrial Park one street parallel to where our GPS was telling us the County Circuit Court was. As we slowly made our way down the road, Donna pointed out the Washington County Cooperative Extension Service saying we should take that photo. I pooh-pooh’d it, intent on finding the court building. She tried to convince me to stop, pointing out that the sign had the word Kentucky on it in large letters. I would have nothing to do with it just now, my head was locked on courthouse even though I knew we were unlikely to find my ideal of one here in this section of town, I was still hoping for a one story place with lettering and maybe an official looking seal. “We’ll come back if the courthouse doesn’t pan out,” I told her.

The parallel street that the GPS said we’d find my courthouse of course held nothing more than another couple of manufacturing plants and their associated parking lots. A u-turn was executed and I made my way back to the County Extension Agent’s place. The lot out front was empty, figuring they were closed for the day, we parked right up front. I grabbed the Challenge Poster and Donna the camera. About the time she was going to take the photo, the front door opened, a woman popped out and said, “Whatcha up to?”

I launched into my 500 word or more explanation of the Challenge and close to my finish, the woman asked, “Can we be in the picture?” “Sure, more the merrier,” I said. Next thing I know I’m standing by with the County Agent, our original friend and two other ladies from the office who are pretending to be The Price Is Right models displaying the sign outside as if it was one of the Final Showcases. This was going to be one special picture.