Category: Kentucky

A Day at the Horse Park

Today we visited the Kentucky Horse Park which was established in 1978. Many of the horses here are retired from racing and many are here due to their unique breeds. We learned quite a few interesting facts such as the very unique and rare breed, American Cream Draft, is born a very dark color but as it ages, the coat will get whiter and the eyes actually go from brown to hazel to yellow. Which is unique to this breed. Also learned that the original Clydesdale breed is usually Black/White but Budweiser breeds the Bay color into their line of horses. We saw Connor, a Belgian, which is the largest draft horse breed, who apparently loves food and often breaks out and is found wandering the premises in search of food (or just being a naughty boy). It was a fun day, most of the horses were pleasant and able to be petted.

Kentucky Horse Park Campground

There was a lot of rain forecast today for the Southeast, but we managed to pack up and leave Yarberry Campground before the rain started, drive through the storm bands, and setup here at Kentucky Horse Park Campground in Lexington, KY after the storms. We departed at 10:40AM EDT and arrived at 3PM EDT. This was our first experience with this rig in fairly heavy winds, but they didn’t seem to push us around too much. We stopped for lunch in London, KY at a Tourist Information Center (which had an RV dump station). After we ate our sandwiches in the car, we pulled into a nearby Sunoco and topped off.

This is a very large campground with paved campsites. Although they are paved, they aren’t necessarily level. We saw one motorhome with its front tires nearly 2′ off the ground. Our site is not level from left to right, so we had our first experience leveling from side to side. Beth, the leveler, did fine pulling the camper up onto our leveling devices. We are getting over 200Mbps downloads and 30Mbps uploads with our AT&T hotspot, but we are starting to reach our limit so we broke out the Dish Satellite for the first time this summer and turned on the MLB package. We are in baseball heaven.

We started out early today (8AM EDT) in order to get to our campsite early and enjoy Lake Barkley. We had a successful ascent over Monteagle maintaining 55MPH in 4th gear with the temperature only climbing to 197 degrees. We should be ready for some Rocky Mountain climbs. We arrived at Noon CDT. Lake Barkley is one of the two HUGE man made lakes in Western Kentucky near Paducah where my good friend Todd grew up. The other lake being Kentucky Lake which is connected to Lake Barkley via a canal. Todd spent a lot of time boating here as a child and back in the last century (1992 and 1993), when he and I owned a 24′ boat (The Twister), he and I brought it up here on two occasions. We boated with all of his friends who were only familiar with two speeds, zero and full throttle.

• 

We are staying at the Canal Campground in the land between the lakes (located right on the canal). We got the only campsite available tonight which happens to be a handicap site (which you are allowed to reserve if no others are available) located right on the water. The view is great and we’re having a good time watching all the boats pass by at (you guessed it) full throttle. We are able to access the Dish Western Arc satellites from our roof mounted antenna and we are getting good data download speeds (10 to 15 Mbps) on Visible.

• 

• 

Todd and his parents introduced us to the local restaurant, Patti’s, which is famous for its pork chops. We are camped less than 2 miles away so I had to take Beth so that she could experience the best pork chop ever. We called for reservations two weeks in advance and the only slot available was 3:45PM CDT which seemed early until we remembered the time change. It felt like 4:45PM to us (which is almost late for supper in Sun City Center). I hadn’t eaten there since 1992, but the other thing I remember besides the incredible pork chops was the mozzarella sticks (we call them cheese logs). They are HUGE and Aaron ate 4 of them at age 4 to amaze us all. We ordered them as an appetizer and they were just as good as I remembered. The part I had forgotten about was the flower pot full of bread. Our kind waitress gave us another pot full to take home. Our waitress talked us down from the 2″ pork chop to the 1″ version. Her theory is that both versions are brined the same amount of time, so a larger percentage of the 1″ version gets the flavor. I don’t know if she’s right, but the 1″ version was delicious, I just felt like I cheated for not getting the 2″, although neither of us managed to finish our 1″ pork chop. We have lots of leftovers.

• 

• 

•