Frankfort, Kentucky

I have never been to Kentucky before and I can see that I was missing out!  Kentucky is fabulously beautiful and reminds me of England with its stone fences and small pastures.  It was fun to drive around and just gaze at the landscape.

Again, I had made up a crazy scheme to try and catch an extra thing on the itinerary and reduce driving time.  So, we headed straight from Nashville to the Louisville Slugger Museum.  It was very stressful to make it happen because we were travelling in torrential rains that slowed us down and we lost an hour from a time change.  But, we parked the trailer at a Target, grabbed some food and used Lyft to head out to see the museum.  We arrived just in time to catch the last tour.  It was a great place to visit!  The tour told us how they selected the wood and made the bats for every player’s specification.  There was an exhibit that said that Ted Williams sent a batch of bats back saying that they were out of spec and they were, by 1/5000th of an inch!!!  We got to see the lathes where the mini bats are made.  Julia suggested I find my commemorative brick for having bought so many of them personally!  It is true that every time I took Zach to a game he somehow convinced me to buy him a mini bat and when he got home he was naughty with the mini bat and had it confiscated!!! Anyway, they gave us all a mini bat at the end of the tour and I was suckered again and bought a pink mini bat for Zina.  Each of us got to hold the game used bat of one of our baseball heroes.  David picked Babe Ruth, Will and I chose Edgar Martinez, and Myra chose Ken Griffey, Jr. 

We arrived to our camp in an exhausted state. Our campsite turned out to be terribly skinny (I tried SO hard to find us nice campgrounds and so I am so sad when I find that I didn’t do very well) and we had to get in around a tree.  We jackknifed too much and took out the rear window of the truck.  Well, THAT was a bad ending to our day.  We have cleaned up the mess and covered the window with plastic.  Hopefully we can figure out how to get it fixed soon.

When I was looking for Kentucky campgrounds, it mentioned that it was near a life size replica of Noah’s Ark!  So, we headed out to see that.  The thing that excited Zina the most was that they offered camel rides so we started with that.  Then we ate at their buffet restaurant which they had done very well.  All the T-shirts in the park were proclaiming people’s faith (we didn’t know so we didn’t join in.)  The best one said “Need an Ark?  I Noah guy.”  I really enjoyed experiencing the immensity of the ark and felt like it truly could have held everything the bible says.  But, I lost interest in the tour about the time they started trying to show the ark saving dinosaurs but then the dinosaurs got buried in flood mud.  I am all for people of faith, though!  It is fun to feel like a crowd!

The time change has been rough and it is very hard to get the kids to go to bed! I was excited that the Frankfort ward was only 8 minutes away.  When we arrived, there was not a car in the parking lot.  Meetinghouse Locator is pretty good about letting you know when Stake Conference is for the different wards but it is tough to use on an iPhone.  I assumed that Frankfort would be in the Lexington Stake so we found the Stake Center and headed there assuming we would catch an hour of it.  Turns out Frankfort is in a Louisville Stake and we lucked out that there was a 10:30am ward in the building we ended up at.  AND, it was Stu & Adrianne’s old ward.  Their ward and stake have been split so we didn’t run into anyone who knew them.  After church we went and saw Stu & Adrianne’s old house so we could get in some family history.  After a nap I took the kids to walk around in downtown Frankfort.  We saw the old Capitol and a nice riverwalk.  Museums are closed on Sunday in the South and though I would have enjoyed visiting them, I am grateful the employees don’t have to work on Sunday!

Monday we thought we would take in a candy tour and then head out to see the Kentucky Horse Park.  The story of the lady who invented Bourbon Balls was much better than the tour itself.  She started candy making with the marble bar counter from a hotel that burned down and it made me think of mom & grandma’s marble slabs! Later her husband died from a lung disease related to his service in WWI and then a fire just before the great depression destroyed everything she owned except the marble bar counter.  She famously said that if the marble could survive two fires she could survive one and she rebuilt from scratch.  Her chocolates were good but not better than Grandma’s.  We didn’t try the bourbon ball (haha.)  

The Kentucky Horse Park was a good place to learn about Kentucky and horses.  They had some beautiful horses on display and the famous horse, Man O’ War is buried near their entrance.  The kids all got a horse ride on a trail while David and I relaxed.  Adrianne said we needed to try two Kentucky originals–Ale 8 and a Hot Brown Sandwich.  We got some Ale 8 soda at the candy shop and then got a Hot Brown at the Cliffside Diner for dinner.  I was the only one who really liked the sandwich but everyone liked the soda.