We woke up and packed up our car and headed about 100 miles down the road. This morning's activity was getting to Louisville, Kentucky. We did a little sightseeing downtown before our main event.
One of the things that Louisville is really known for is the Louisville Slugger baseball bat. We couldn’t resist hunting down the 120 foot tall that in front of the museum and factory. It was very very big. We were disappointed that the museum wasn’t open yet, but this was some thing remarkable to see.
We then wound our way a few miles away from downtown to Churchill Downs. This is the special race track where the Kentucky Derby horse race is run. This track was started by a grandson of William Clark, of Lewis and Clark fame. We arrived quite early and so wandered around and Dick even had time for a little nap in the back of the van before the museum opened.
The museum focused on all things horse racing and Kentucky Derby. We had the chance to watch a very well done movie in the round about the history of the Kentucky Derby, and had the feeling of being at one of these amazing races.
After the movie, we went on a tour out in the now empty race track that can hold 150,000 fans on Derby Day each May. Our tour was led by and enthusiastic young man who knew a lot about horse racing. the tour was a little more sober knowing that they currently are not holding races at Churchill Downs due to a number of horses dying this season. We didn’t get very satisfactory answers about those concerns.
Following the tour, we poked around in the museum for a while more, and Patti took advantage of the opportunity to ride a mechanical horse to victory. There’s a lot to know about horse racing, and we were glad to have taken the tour.
We then spent the afternoon driving to our next destination: St. Louis, Missouri. We drove and both Patti and Dick realized we are getting worn out on this trip. We’re headed into areas with record-breaking heat. And we’ve already driven over 6000 miles. After a long, serious discussion, we made a decision to cut our trip a little shorter and head back home at the end of this week rather than four days later. In the discussion, Dick talked about feeling as though we were pioneers with a wagon filled with all kinds of goodies headed across the desert. At some point you have to look at what you’re dragging along and see if there’s some things that might need to be put to the side. So, we decided we are not going to do the visit to the three Texas presidential libraries, at least at this point. We also are going to set aside visiting Big Bend National Park, which is having horrible record-breaking temperatures in over 110°. It just doesn’t seem prudent to head into that heat for such a long time. Disappointing, but sounds like a smart idea.
Once we reached our hotel, we made a couple of phone calls arranging with family and friends that we were going to visit for that to shift a bit. Then, we canceled the reservations and made some new reservations as Dick plotted a new route to get us home. After a quick dinner at Denny’s, we laid back for the evening with Dick having some time to work on some of the fabulous photos we have taken. We have taken over 5000 photos so far. A lot of photos and then off to bed for a good night sleep
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