Unfortunately, the first horse race of the season at Churchill Downs was after we left the Louisville area. But we decided it was worth the hour drive back, since we might not be closer than that in the future. We didn’t care to tow the RV back and forth, though, so we stayed a couple of nights at a Boondockers Welcome place, called Steepleview Farm. It ended up being a really nice place to stay, with hiking trails through the woods and a super friendly host who told lots of stories of buying and developing the farm. There were lots of spider webs between the trees along the hiking trail, so Randy wielded a stick to defend us from them! We also bought some salsa and honey from their online store.
We went to Churchill Down’s Twilight Thursday event and saw 8 races. We had learned a little about placing bets at the Kentucky Derby museum, so after watching a couple of the races and looking at the list of races/horses/jockeys, we went to a window and placed small bets. Having a horse to root for definitely made the race more interesting. Randy’s bet was for his horse to come in 1st, and it DID! He made a little over $4 on a $5 bet, so not bad! My bet was for a horse to come in 1st, 2nd or 3rd and it BARELY came in 3rd, at the last second his nose stretched past the 3rd horse’s. I made 42 cents on my $2 bet, woohoo! Well, at least I didn’t lose my money. Randy made fun of me for saying that I “voted on” a horse instead of “bet on” it; haha, I guess it’s not a bad thing that betting is not a part of my normal vocabulary.
We walked over to the paddocks for one race, to see the horses warming up and doing their pre-race parade. Then we found better seats than the ones we had tickets for, since it wasn’t very crowded and watched the rest of the races. It was an enjoyable way to spend an evening and now we can say we’ve seen a horse race at Churchill Downs!
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