On our way to the Kentucky Derby

This is the spring trees in Mammoth Caves National Park.  See the white cloud looking thing?  That is Dogwood.  It reminds me of clouds in the deep forest.

One of the roads runs right through a river.  Instead of a bridge they have a ferry that can hold three cars at a time.  It is towed along a high tow line.

We visited several distilleries.  This one is really fancy.

This one has a master distiller that has been there for 60 years.  His son is taking over soon.  It seems that being a master distiller runs in a family. 

This place hand fills their bottles and hand seals them.

Everyone of the distilleries has a visitor center. It was truly interesting to see how each of them work their product.  The recipe is generally the same with minor variations.  You'd think they get together and work together.

We started our Rally by going to Lexington to visit a horse training center.  These horses are two and are getting use to a race track. They are beautiful.

I got a shot of a horse with all four feet in the air.  As a matter of fact I got three shots.  I did good!!!

This horse has won several races.  And she is 9 years old.  Her trainer said she still likes to run so he lets her. 

We drove up the road to a park that has a theme of horses.  Surprise.  This was a show of horses from around the world.  This is a Morgan from the USA.

A gypsy horse from around Serbia.

And the Austrian Lipesaner.  I spelled that really badly, but you know what I mean.

Tuesday we went to Churchill Downs for breakfast and a tour of the race track.  The gray haired man is a commentary? from CNN. He was right by our table.

The room was in Millionaire's Row, and it is huge.  There must have been 500 people in there.  But the food was pretty good.

We got to watch some of the 3 year olds train.  It was awesome.

We had to get our picture made with our hats.  That wasn't my derby hat.

The place is very big.

The next day we did a lot of touring.  This is the Louisville Slugger factory.

We also went to My Old Kentucky Home.  Apparently Steven Foster wrote the song for this house.  He was a cousin of the owner.

I got stickers for my scrapbook here.  Everything has a gift shop.

Derby day  This was our section.  It was in the shade (thank goodness) it was really sunny.

Even some of the men wore hats.  The people watching here was better than Key West.  Some of the men wore the most outlandish suits.  One I saw on the big screen looked like a rubics cube print.

Everyone was standing up in the stands and I couldn't see the flag thing.  So I took a picture from the jumbo tron.

Josh Grogan sang the anthem.

Horse getting ready to go into the gate.

I couldn't see the gate.  But I held my camera up high and got this shot.

 

 

I'm glad I went, but I'd not do it again.  There was 170,514 people there.  We didn't do much walking around because of the crowds.  The seats in front of us were mostly empty until the Derby was run.  And they were pretty much empty during the last two races.  I can't believe people pay that kind of money just for the two minute race.  I guess there really are stupid rich folks.

 

We left Louisville this morning and are now in Columbus Ind.  Tuesday morning we head for Effingham, Ill.  We'll be at Aunt Beverly's for Mother's Day weekend.

That's it for now.  Love, Mom and Dad