Giant Chicken

My last photo before flying back home.

Louisville Slugger and Churchill Downs

Louisville is the home of the Louisville Slugger baseball bat, the best bat in the world. The company has been a fixture for more than 100 years. http://www.slugger.com/Churchill Downs is the racetrack that hosts the Kentucky Derby, a grand tradition every May, and is often enhanced by a race between the two most famous paddlewheel steamboats, the Belle of Louisville and the Delta Queen.

Downtown Louisville

Downtown Louisville is succeeding at creating a lovely place to work and live. The Fourth street area is growing, and new plans exist to grow even more, especially including upscale living areas in the heart of the city. Good stuff.
Here are some lovely downtown sights.

Taylor is a winner!!!

The Belle of Louisville had very few passengers yesterday, so when they announced a drawing for a door prize, I thought I'd try an experiment. I'd heard that if you fold an entry, there's an increased chance of winning, so I did that with the cards we were given for the door prize.
And Taylor won!!! It was pretty funny, because they asked for help in pronouncing the name of the city she came from. What a hoot.
Granted, the prize were two plastic mugs, but it was more the thrill of winning. Taylor? Not so impressed. LOL.

Belle of Louisville

This is one of the best events on this trip. Louisville's done a great job on the waterfront, and the paddlewheel steamboat is the oldest one still in use. We were really propelled by the paddle. Very cool.

Berea: a thunderous experience

Actually, Berea was rather less than I had hoped for. We made the drive down there at 105 degrees Fahrenheit. Once there, we visited some craft and art stores, but found that there were many fewer artists than I'd expected. The quality was good, but I was finished looking before I could find anything to buy. "Gee, darn, what a shame," I can hear my husband saying.
The drive back was much more interesting. We found many fields of tobacco, ripening and almost ready for harvest. The horse farms were also beautiful, with the characteristic black fences and the thoroughbreds are as gorgeous as you might imagine.
Then, 30 miles out of Louisville, a huge thunderstorm broke loose. Lightning everywhere on the horizon, followed by the most intense downpour I've experienced in years. Fabulous.

General Hoosier-land

Hoosier is another name for residents of Indiana. The history of the name is ambiguous, but my favorite version comes from the pioneers.
In those days, they had no windows in the log cabins, so when someone knocked on the door, they had to call out to ask who was at the door. As the dialect matured, it became:
Who is there?
Who's there?
whosthere?
whoshere?
hoosier?
Photos are
Schimpf's candy store and soda fountain
Joe Huber's farm and restaurant (fabulous Hoosier cooking, like real fresh corn on the cob)

Visiting some old friends

Relatives long since gone...

A puzzle for you

Can you guess what the sign means? This is local dialect.

Colgate Elementary School

The same school that I, my mother and my grandfather attended, now an office building.
The sign says it all about Indiana: basketball and religion.

Other Clarksville sights

The floodwall between Clarksville and the Ohio River. Once the gates closed, anything on the river side might be washed away in a flood. 1937 was the worst, and my grandparents lost everything as their house was tossed upside down and rolled several blocks down the street. The worst of it was, in 1937 the Red Cross had some corruption and only wanted to sell them relief supplies. Never rich, they had nothing to buy anything with.

A soda only a Hoosier could love.

The fossil beds at the Ohio River falls in Clarksville. In my early years it was a great place to gather arrowheads and fossils. Now it's a protected park.

Colgate Palmolive Plant Clarksville

Second largest clock in the world. Also a former prison. My grandfather worked at the soap factory as a night watchman. We would also see the effects of "rush hour" each day at 3 p.m. when the Colgate Palmolive factory let out and the fastest path back to "new Clarksville" was directly down our street.

Indiana

House in which I grew up...

The photographer

Cumberland Gap

Where Daniel Boone crossed.

Bible Belt

On the border with Kentucky, near Tazewell...

A church with a strong anti-abortion stance.

Kitties at Christine's