Wild Emu Chase Afresh

On our way to visit the Frank Lloyd Wright designed Fallingwaters we stopped in for our second breakfast¹ at a small cafe in Confluence, PA. After we finished splitting a delicious breakfast sandwich on potato bread Donna asked the woman who waited on us if she knew of any emu² farms around.

She thought for a minute and said, “Yeah, there’s one between Somerset and Berlin.” We showed her the state map and she pointed out about where she remembers it being. We were about an hour too early for the 10:00 AM opening at Fallingwaters anyway, so we thought what the heck, it’s only 25 miles in the wrong direction. Let’s go.

We used a combination of GPS and state map to find our way to Berlin, PA via the road the woman mentioned. We saw no emus on our drive, so when we hit the main road outside Berlin I turned right towards “town” to see if we could find a shop with someone else to ask about the elusive emus. The first thing we came to was a NAPA garage which would work out perfect because the Emperor was blind in one eye.³

This garage was kind of a small shop so I wasn’t sure they could help with the headlight portion of our quest, but was hopeful on the emu front. Turned out it was the other way around. The 9006 bulb they had and it cost just nine bucks, about what Advanced Auto would have charged, but these guys installed it for me. It wasn’t for the lack of trying that the emu hunt came up empty though. One of the fellows called someone he knew and they gave him the name of the place, so he looked it up on the interwebs. He gave me the phone number, which I called and got the generic answering machine leave-a-message recording. He then called his wife who told him they sold all the emus a year or so ago and actually the farm was sold off too.

As a bonus, while we were standing around waiting on them to find the headlight bulb Donna noticed the Official Pennsylvania Inspection Station sign and thought it would make a nice proof of the State of PA for the Motoring Challenge.

1. Second breakfast is usually eaten an hour or two after the first hotel breakfast and it is to wash away the taste and memory of the faux eggs and lousy potatoes and or breakfast meat.
2. Every since those 3 bonus point requirements were issued, one of which was three farm animals in the photo, with emus garnering extra points, we have become slightly obsessed with finding some emus.
3. Both headlights were working when we left the Mexican restaurant last night, but only one came on after the stop at Food Lion.