There were several things I wanted to do in Louisville, so we stayed five nights at Deam Lake State Recreation Area, which was in Indiana about 30 minutes away. I wanted to stay closer, but all the nearer campgrounds had poor reviews and some were if’fy for big rigs. Turns out Deam Lake Rec Area wasn’t big rig friendly either. The site I picked was a pull-thru that supposedly could fit a 70 ft RV, but it was skinny, with trees on both sides and not level at all. We didn’t even attempt to pull into it. The area of the campground intended for horses was more wide open and had longer sites, but the lady we talked to said they weren’t available for the full five days we had planned to be there. <sigh> So, we drove around to other areas and found a few sites that could work and were available! We just had to put our wheels all the way back to the edge of the concrete and put our stabilizers down in the grass, but it worked. The campground was very quiet and mostly deserted for the first few nights, then filled up on the weekend (mostly with noisy kids it seemed like, ha). The weather was really nice, plus we had a little shade, so we were good!
The first day we went to the Kentucky Derby Museum and the Muhammad Ali Center, which was a lot to see in one day, but were both very interesting. Then the next day we went back to see the Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory and the Frazier History Museum, which was also a lot. Who knew you could get so worn out just by mostly standing around and reading for two days straight?
At the Kentucky Derby Museum, we started with the “free” tour of Churchill Downs. Neither Randy nor I have ever paid much attention to horse racing, so it was mostly all new information for us. There was one exhibit that taught us how to place “bets” on a horse, then showed a video of a race to see how we did. (Not very well, haha!) Going to the Kentucky Derby was on my bucket list, but after hearing about the crowds and difficulty with getting a hotel, along with traffic and parking issues, I’ve decided to modify it to just going to a horse race. The season actually starts the week after we leave, but we’ll only be about an hour and a half from here, so maybe we’ll come back for a race.
We’ve also not paid much attention to boxing, but heard the Muhammad Ali Center was worth going to still. I didn’t realize what a character Muhammad Ali was. There were lots of video clips of him being interviewed where he talked about how great and pretty he was, haha. One section of the museum had a bunch of sitting areas with monitors where you could pick from a long list of his fights to watch. We watch two from when he was older and fought Joe Frazier. He lost the first one and won the second, but neither were knock outs so went lots of rounds. (Thankfully, the museum had edited the video to cut out some of it, so it didn’t last as long.) I was super surprised at how much they stood around leaning on each other instead of throwing punches, and how the ref had to keep separating them and telling them to fight instead. Not like the movies at all! Oh well, guess I’m still not a boxing fan.
I’ve always been interested in how things are made so I really enjoyed the factory tour at the Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory. Reading about how the huge bat leaning on the building was made and assembled was pretty cool, too (spoiler — It’s not from a huge tree — the wood grain is just painted on). The stories and exhibits were more interesting than I thought they’d be, but my bar was pretty low to begin with, since I’m not a huge baseball fan.
I guess we didn’t get pictures of anything inside the Frazier Museum, but it had a quite the variety of exhibits in it. I thought they did a nice job with the KentuckyShow! film. They were very enthusiastic about Kentucky, that’s for sure. And they’re really proud of their bourbon, too. We roamed around the museum for a couple of hours, then decided to be done when our parking meter ran out. I was tired of reading and we had seen most of it.
On our way back to the RV, we stopped at The Chicken House for an early dinner. When we passed it the day before, it was super crowded so we thought it must be pretty good to be so popular. I’m not a huge fan of fried chicken, but I have to admit that it was good, and very reasonably priced. We got the glazed carrots, baked beans and chicken & dumplings as sides, which were also good.
We hung around the campground on our last day and did the 2 mile Lake Vista hike. I was a nice, rustic trail through the woods. Most of it was cleared but there were a few places where trees had fallen and not been removed. It just added to the adventure of the hike! Unfortunately, after all the work of climbing the steep hill up to the “vista”, it was too overgrown to see the lake. Oh well, it was still an enjoyable hike, in the low 70s and not too muggy. It drizzled rain for about 10 minutes, but the tree coverage was so thick, we barely felt any drops at all.
At the recommendation of the lady in the entrance booth, we drove a few miles to Borden, IN to try Norma Jeans Ice Cream. We both got a chuckle out of their sign. The ice cream was indeed very creamy and yummy! Then, on the way back to our campsite, we stopped at the lake to take a pic, since we didn’t get one from above. It was a nice peaceful area, but pretty far away from other stuff to do.
0 Comments