After the Flood, There's the Tourist Attraction

Some day soon, we will all be able to see the Ark of Noah on display on Kentucky.

No, this isn't some miracle that has renamed Mount Ararat (or wherever Noah's famed rescue boat ended up). It's actually a theme park, tourist attraction, boondoggle — pick your term being sponsored by none other than Governor of Kentucky. Yes, Steven L. Beshear himself has gotten onboard with this one, talking about how the construction of this whatever-it-is will create jobs and funnel tourist money into the state economy and other such funds-based initiatives. But, apparently, it really is going to happen. They're really going to build a theme park with a mockup of the famed Noah's Ark as the centerpiece. Giraffes will be kept in pens onboard, and presumably visitors can walk around on the ark and get up close and personal with the giraffes. (No word yet on whether they're going to let a dove go periodically from the bow of the boat.)

Also planned are a 100-foot-tall Tower of Babel, a recreation of a Middle Eastern village from the 1st Century CE, and a series of special programs depicting Moses, the plagues that bedeviled Egypt's pharaoh, and the parting of the Red Sea. (No word, either, on whether Yul Brynner's voice will be heard at any point.)

I can see the Tower of Babel being a hot-ticket item, actually, for people wanting to learn several foreign languages at once (although they will have to listen very closely). Then again, it might be just another day in Brussels.

The whole thing is called the Ark Encounter. The governor claims that up to 900 people will employed in the end to build the thing, which is supposed to cost in the neighborhood of $150 million. A site hasn't been picked yet, but the website says that organizers are considering somewhere in some county near Ohio. That narrows it down.

And in the first year alone, organizers say, more than one-and-one-half million visitors will cross the threshold. That's certainly enough to make back the money spent to build all of this wonderfulness.

And just to show that it's not all their-way-or-the-highway, the organizers have enlisted Amish builders to supply the wooden pegs and frames for building the showcase Ark. So that surely puts to rest any ideas of any sort of radical agenda being pushed by these folks, who have also given us the Creation Museum in Petersburg.

Last thing: Don't hold your breath waiting to see all this stuff. The park isn't due to open until 2014. Some things are worth waiting for.