CC Trip - Kentucky

Another long day of driving, ending up in Kentucky.  Known as the "Horse Capital of the World", Kentucky has 450 Horse Farms in and around the Lexington Bluegrass area.  It is also known for its production of 95% of the bourbon produced in the world.  More on this later....

We discovered not all service stations are RV friendly, especially if you're towing and your total length is about 55 feet......... Seems we couldn't make the turn to exit the station, and Tony had to disconnect the Jeep so I could back up the motorhome.  

So.....we decided that we'll hang with the big boys and only use Flying J, Pilot or TA Service Stations.

We're staying at the Kentucky Horse Park Campground. 

It's adjacent to the Kentucky Horse Park which covers 1200 acres of rolling hills and meadows, with paddocks of happy horses.  This will be the site of  The World Equestrian Games in 2010, the first time it will be held outside of Europe.  There's a horse museum where notable thoroughbreds are memorialized, farrier seminars, tours of local horse farms.  There is a Mare and Foal show every day, and a Parade of 24 of the Park's 50 breeds of Horses.  We will spend a couple of days here and take it all in.

Thoroughbred Cigar, below, placed in 28 of his 33 starts, including 19 wins.  He is the all-time money winner at retirement, with nearly $10 million in winnings.  Cigar was voted Horse of the Year in 1995 and 1996, and Horse of the Decade.

Below, the New York bred gelding Funny Cide, is owned by a group of friends from High School, who pooled their money together and bought a few race horses.  Who would have thought they'd end up with a Kentucky Derby and Preakness Winner! (2003)  Rumor has it he likes biscuits from Cracker Barrel, and doesn't like being groomed.

Below are demonstrations of Vaulting and the Mare and Foal Show with the miniatures.

We took a tour of Lexington, and the surrounding Horse Farms. The home below is a Guest House on one of the "Level 1" Horse Farms:

Here's the owner's home:

We also visited the Old Friends Farm, where thoroughbreds retire and spend their remaining years.  Also, visited Keeneland Racetrack, a primer for the Kentucky Derby. Here's tribute to the jockies at Keenland.

Everything in Lexington is Horses - Here's a shot of Thoroughbred Park in the middle of downtown Lexington, where bronze sculptures of horses and their mounts are in racing form.

We visited the Buffalo Trace Bourbon Distillery in Frankfort on our second day.  It is the oldest continually operating distillery in America (235 years), recently celebrated its 6 millionth barrel of hootch. Bottles are still processed by hand individually.   It even produced the happy juice during the Prohibition, labeling it for medicinal purposes.......(right!).  Tony enjoyed all the samples, and of course supported the local economy!

On our way south, we stopped in Bowling Green, at The National Corvette Museum.

It was a great stop, and the cars were magnificent specimens from the inaugural 1953 model, to a 2009 beauty.  They were in mint condition and it was a wonderful collection.