Kentucky Horse Park

Friday, June 23rd, we head East in the morning for our next stop which is a 2 1/2 hour drive over to the Kentucky Horse Park Campground just outside the Lexington area. We were on winding back roads and some highways. Once we got closer to Lexington, the terrain changed to be more open roads, less hilly and large fenced in paddocks for the horses next to grand homes. Beautiful. This is what we had envisioned Kentucky would look like. We end up at Kentucky Horse Park via a narrow back road that says “no thru trucks.” GPS doesn’t always show the best way of getting places but we got there. Once again a back-in site, which takes a couple of tries but we get it.

We have a late lunch and I head to the pool for a swim before the rains are due later in the day along with promised thunder and lightening… the remnants of Cindy that hit the Gulf. After returning from the pool, we’re inside and hear a siren go off outside and a voice over a loud speaker. We head out just in time to hear a Tornado Watch has been issued by the National Weather Service from 3:30 in the afternoon until 10 pm at night. This is new. Never experienced a Tornado Watch before. We take a walk up to the office, and see they’ve posted signs that if necessary, go to the Bath Houses for protection. Let’s hope that won’t be necessary. While at the office, we also pick up literature on the events that are being offered at the Kentucky Horse Park the next day. Assuming we make it through the night, we want to go see stuff.

Thankfully other than heavy rain… about 3 plus inches which ended up flowing down the campground streets… we suffered no other ill effects. No thunder, no lightening, no high winds.

Saturday, June 24th, is a perfect weather day… sunny, low 80s, no humidity, light breeze. Gorgeous. We head into the Kentucky Horse Park. Beautiful State Park with daily events going on during the summer. They offer a “Hall of Champions” show where you can see past Derby champions and Triple Crown winners and here their stories. They also offer a “Parade of Breeds” show where there’s a variety of riders in costume on different breeds of horses entering the ring one at a time and you hear about the specifics of that breed. On Saturday they also had about 6 girls ranging in age from 9 to 16 performing as a group. All very interesting and well done. There are a bevy of stables available for use when there’s special events going on and more stables are needed. Plus they have one gynormous stable for draft horses that they say may be the largest in North America. There’s also an International Horse Museum on the premises that is part of the Smithsonian. Well done museum. We had left Kya in the trailer, but we did run across two big malamutes at the Park. After several hours there, we ran a few errands and headed back to camp and sat outside and enjoyed the beautiful weather.

Our next door neighbor came over to chat. She was one of the judges in one of the events going on at the Horse Park. We made the appropriate oohs and aahs and she said “it’s a volunteer gig; completely unglamorous.” She was camping in a horse trailer next to us. We saw many of those in the Park. Horses can be in the back and sleeping accommodations in the front. She was originally from Fresno, CA area but moved out to KY about 10 years ago and loves it. She did say this fabulous weather wasn’t necessarily normal. Typically it can be hot and humid this time of year. We just lucked out apparently.