Wagon train arrives in Scenery Hill for Pike Days
Jerry Walker of Carroll Township, shown with his ponies, joined a wagon train that rested Saturday in Scenery Hill during the annual Pike Days.
Brent Blazier of Valley Grove, W.Va., served as a scout on his large donkey named Harley for the wagon train that arrived Saturday in Scenery Hill for Pike Days.
SCENERY Hill – Moving at a pace of about 4 mph, Jerry Walker said he paid no mind to the rude motorists who cursed and sounded their car horns at a wagon train he’s been taking part in this weekend along National Pike in Washington County.
“When you’re doing this, you can’t think of anything else,” Walker, of Carroll Township, said Saturday after the train pulled into Scenery Hill for the annual Pike Days festival.
“Your mind is on the ponies,” he said, referring to the two Haflinger/paint cross ponies that pulled his wagon among 13 others from Washington to this village that was once a major stagecoach stop along the road known today as Route 40.
Many of these drivers long to have lived in the mid-1800s and that’s why they take part in the wagon train that has been making this trip for more than four decades, said Kate Glowacki of Mt. Pleasant, Fayette County.
“It’s those of us who would have loved to have lived back then when times were simpler,” Glowacki said.
Walker could easily have been mistaken for someone following the 19th Century Western movement while wearing a cowboy hat and seated in a covered wagon. But, take a closer look at his getup, and you’ll notice there was a modern and comfortable car seat for him to sit in while leading his ponies.
It can get uncomfortable, he said, sitting on a wooden bench while taking part in a wagon train for as many as 20 hours a day.
This wagon train began it’s 3-day, 35-mile trip in Claysville and will leave Scenery Hill today to make its final stop on this journey at the National Pike Steam, Gas, and Horse Association 2017 Spring Show in Centerville.
From there they will pack up their wagons and animals on trailers and return home with the recreational vehicles they brought with them for sleeping quarters, Glowacki said.
“We had a good turnout this year,” she said.