Most of the places we’ve stayed on the 50/50 tour have been delightful. Clean, comfortable, sometimes quirky and unique. Fortunately, only a handful have made it to the Do Not Return List. We added one to The List in Kentucky. I’m not going to name names, but if you should be visiting south central Kentucky anytime soon, please call me. I’ll tell you about the dangers of being attracted to a suite hotel just because it has two bedrooms, despite bad reviews from previous hotel visitors. I’ll tell you about being in the second bedroom, ready to fall asleep, then hearing a loud noise and a small voice saying, “I think I need a little help here”, and finding your daughter askew on a mattress that is no longer attached to a sofa bed. Let’s just say none of us got much sleep that night.
We did, however, manage to make it to Kentucky in time to watch yet another minor league baseball game (at the expense of Nashville, some of you may remember.). This is good training for Bill, who dreams one day of visiting all professional baseball parks — major and minor — in the country. I think I’ll be busy that day. Anyway, in Bowling Green, Kentucky, we watched the Hot Rods take on the Lansing (MI) Lug Nuts. The Kentucky team takes its name from the nearby Corvette factory. Just for fun, we drove past the National Corvette Museum, but we were not worthy enough to park in one of the special spaces.
I’m not sure what the building was designed to look like, but it reminded us a lot of a Rock City garden gnome.
We drove (in our non-Corvette) along routes I-64 and I-65 in Kentucky, traveling through the state’s two time zones and along the Abraham Lincoln Memorial Highway. We passed Barren River Lake State Park, which conjures up all sorts of strange visuals for me.
We stopped at Mammoth cave to once again feel very, very small. We headed underground for a glimpse of the cave’s renowned geology. But when I say glimpse, I mean glimpse — we saw about a quarter mile of the cave, but there are nearly 400 miles of cave trails. We had the same feeling looking at the cave as we had looking at Lake Superior. It’s hard to grasp this kind of enormity, kind of like looking at the ocean and trying to comprehend how far it continues beyond the horizon.
The area we saw had been mined during the Civil War. The dirt was used to make saltpeter, which was in turn used to make gunpowder. A guide told us that slaves worked 12-hour days in the cave’s darkness, only to emerge from a long day’s work to be greeted by further darkness from nightfall.
As we left the cave, rangers asked us to wash off our feet to help prevent the spread of whitenosed fungus, a disease that has killed over one million bats throughout the Eastern U.S.
From Mammoth Cave, we drove toward Louisville. Once again, we opted to sacrifice history and culture — in this case, Abe Lincoln’s birthplace — to satisfy our grumbling stomachs and anxious taste buds. (At least we’re honest about our choices, Abe. ) On to The Brown Hotel, famous for the Hot Brown sandwich and delectable Derby Pie. Yum. An open-faced turkey and bacon sandwich covered in Mornay sauce, followed closely by a chocolate and walnut tart.
Louisville’s main street brought smiles to our faces with its whimsical art and architecture.
Now, of course you knew that we would schedule a long visit to the Louisville Slugger Factory to learn all about how baseball bats are made. Not surprisingly, the factory tour was one of the highlights of our 50/50 tour to date. Unfortunately for you, dear reader, photography was not allowed. The fine details of how wooden cylinders are lovingly crafted into home-run hitting masterpieces will remain secrets locked into our memories forever, not to be shared. You’ll just have to visit for yourself. At least we were able to take photos in the factory’s museum.
We were able to hold the actual bats of famous hitters. Tell me this slugger (holding Mickey Mantle’s bat) wouldn’t strike fear into the heart of any major league pitcher:
The kids, swinging alongside the Babe, and alongside each other in the batting cage:
Here’s another great quote to play and live by:
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We begrudgingly left the Slugger Factory and made a quick drive-by past Louisville’s other iconic sight, Churchill Downs, home to the Kentucky Derby. The ponies weren’t running while we were there, but it was still fun to see the white steeples.
We struggled a bit with Kentucky’s iconic photo. Should it be a baseball bat or a horse? As you’ve noticed, we decided on the horse, thinking that probably more Americans were familiar with the Kentucky Derby than the Louisville Slugger. We also saw an awful lot of beautiful green pastures filled with horses.
With all due respect to the Colonel, there was one thing we decided would definitely not be Kentucky’s iconic photo:
Travel Tip! Always take your hotel room key with you when you leave your room. Leaving a sleeping teenager in the room is no guarantee that the door will be opened for you. Especially if you leave the room early in the morning. Even if you knock loudly on the door and you call the phone in the room, and the teenager is asleep DIRECTLY NEXT to both the phone and the door, this is absolutely no guarantee that the teen will hear your plaintive cries. And you will be stuck sitting in the lobby. This is especially unfortunate if the hotel is on the Do Not Return List.
37. Kentucky
Horses