A nice day in Louisville

Heartland Campground
Campbellsville, KY

We've just completed our 4th week at Amazon,

and have 8 weeks to go.

Can't come soon enough :)

Yesterday George and I celebrated our 4th anniversary!

We decided to celebrate by taking a trip up to Louisville.

It's about an hour and a half drive up I65.

The fall colors are just starting to pop out.

The one thing we wanted to visit was Churchill Downs and
the Kentucky Derby Museum.

Both of us love watching the horse races,

and used to go to Pocono Downs to watch them run

when still living in Pennsylvania.

I got goosebumps as we parked and walked to the entrance!

The first thing you see is Barbaro's final resting place.

There are several tours offered by the facility.
We chose the Historic Walking Tour, which
is included in the admission fee to the museum,
and the Behind the Scenes tour which was $11 per person extra.
For $50 total, it was a day long tour of pretty much everything.

The Derby Museum is chock full of everything about horse racing.
There is a section of the starting gate so you can see how tight a fit
it is with the horse and rider locked in..

There are hands on exhibits, where you can 'be the jockey' :-)

The racing silks are nicely displayed as well.

We started the walking tour,
which started right outside.
Our tour guide gave us the history of the Downs,
it's been in operation for 141 years!
The name comes from the fact that it now is
on the farm that once was owned by the Churchill family.
'Downs' comes from horse racing's roots in England,
where the land that horses raced on were 'downs'.

We got to see where the horses are led
into paddocks to be checked before heading to the track.

They are paraded around under the famous horses' names that won before them.

Next we got to go into the stands to see the track.
Imagine these bleachers filled to capacity on Derby Day!

The famous twin spires..

..and finish line..

In between tours, we got a bite to eat in the Derby Cafe.
George had a bowl of Burgoo, which he said was great,
and I had Smoked Ham Wontons. Yummy!
We couldn't start our second tour without a piece of famous
Derby Pie!

Finally it was time for the second tour,
a Behind the Scenes walk around the building.

First we got a bit of history on horseshoes..

Then this gem, a 40' by 7' mural of every jockey
who has won the Kentucky Derby.
It is continually painted each year by Pierre Bellocq,
a longtime Daily Racing Form cartoonist.

This year's winning jockey,
Victor Espinoza.

The tour led us through Millionaire's Row.
For a mere $6,999 you can reserve a seat at a table
with your rich friends.

 You do get an incredible view of the track..

We thoroughly enjoyed our day at the Downs.
There was no racing there as Keeneland has racing this month.
Starting in November, racing will begin again at Churchill.

In the meantime we were searching for a good place
to have an anniversary dinner.
One of our RV friends messaged us and told us that
her son is the Executive Head Chef at a Louisville hotel,
and that we should stop and say 'hi'.
We didn't get there until 7 pm, and although he
was very busy,
he popped out and talked to us for a bit
as we were having a beer.

When he found out it was our anniversary,
he very graciously sent out some food he prepared for us!

It was a nice surprise, and we really enjoyed it!

Today we relaxed a bit,
then met with a group of RV-Dreamers
at the local state park for a potluck.
It was great to get together with the few of us
that are working at Amazon.

Been a great couple of days!