Valentine's Day Trip

Stacey and Linda woke up early and began to dress for their trip to Pauline and Brent's house to baby sit for Julie. I showered and dressed for a trip to Louisville to see the National Farm Implement and Machinery Show. We all left the house around 6 AM. I drove down to our neighbor Steve Riddle's house and picked him up for the ride to Burkesville. We arrived at the Bank Of Cumberland and were told to go inside. We went inside and were offered sausage biscuits and something to drink. We waited a few minutes for everyone to arrive as we ate. Shortly, we loaded on the chartered bus and headed to Columbia to another branch bank to pick up more people. We made the short stop in Columbia and there was a second bus with others on board A few minutes later, both buses pulled out and we were headed towards Campbellsville and then on to Louisville. The bank's employees passed out drinks and a small bag of goodies during the trip.

We unloaded at the front of the Lousiville Exposition Center and walked into the building slightly before 10 AM. Since this was the second time Steve and I had went we had a better idea of the layout of all the buildings and we began our tour up and down almost all of the aisles.

The place was crowded but not enough to slow us down most of the time. Steve was interested in looking at cattle gates and I was mostly just looking at everything, but not that interested in buying anything this year. I had came back from the show last year and bought a new tractor from a dealer in Tompkinsville. Of course, there are things I would like to buy if I had an unlimited farm budget. One is pictured below.
  
The piece of equipment in the left picture above hooks to the back of a square hay baler and the bales come out of the baler and go right into the 'Bale Band-It'. The machine then stacks 21 square bales and puts two wire straps around those bales to create one large bale. The large bale is then dumped out into the field to be picked up by another tractor with a front loader or hay spike. It takes all the hand pickup and tossing the bales on a hay wagon out of square baling of hay. It also makes the stacking of the hay done in the barn capable of being done with a tractor similarly equipped. We each picked a long line to stand in to get our choices of lunch and met again to eat, then resumed our tour of some of the attached buildings with more displays. After touring almost every aisle, we returned to the eating area to just sit down slightly after 2 PM. It was the first time we had set down since we got off the bus. We waited until the bus pulled up in front of the entrance where we had been dropped off and then we boarded just before 3 PM. We had a few minutes to wait until everyone was on, then the driver pulled the bus away and we headed back to Columbia. The driver stopped in Columbia and unloaded several guests, then we continued on to Burkesville arriving right at dusk. Steve rode with me to his house and I made it home at 6:15 PM. A long day and a tiring one too. I enjoyed the trip though and appreciate being asked by the Bank of Cumberland to go as their guest.