Nashville, TN and Louisville, KY

Monday, August 2 - Shepherdsville, KY

AS promised in my last post, here is the report on Nashville and Louisville.

NASHVILLE: We just chilled on Friday night after we arrived at the campgound, which is approximately 15 miles north of the city, just off of I-65. We awoke early on Saturday morning and went to breakfast at a little "homey" place which we found last year, on the last day of our trip here. We liked it so much that we promised to visit again if we ever got back to the Nashville area. So, we arrived at the restaurant, Mason's is the name, and we noticed that the parking lot was full already. We were about to turn around when I spotted a space off to the side. After parking, we entered the restaurant and immediately saw that it was FULL! The waitress asked us if we would be interesed in sitting at their "family table", which had two empty seats. We agreed, and were seated. Long story short, we got to talking to the men seated at this table (there were no women sitting at the table, so Kathy was the only female), and got some valuable information about where to go in Nashville to see great acts. One gentleman we spoke with was actually a performer, a Country Music singer! His name is Grant Randolph, and he was very interesting to talk to. We had mentioned in conversation that this was the 2nd consecutive year we spend our wedding anniversary in Nashville, so before he left, he went out to his car and came back with a copy of his latest CD for us as a gift. One of the songs on his CD was written for him by the great Vince Gill, who is a Legend here in Nashville, and Country Music in general!

After breakfast, which was great, as usual!, we went into the city and visited the Country Music Hall of Fame. We missed this the last time we were here because we got there just before closing, so we made sure we got there early enough to go through the museum. This was a great take and we got some good pictures. I hope you excuse us if there are duplicates, but we used two cameras, so that I could shoot pictures with the "older" camera, which has fewer pixels, so the pictures are smaller than those taken with Kathy's camera and easier to upload with a "slow" connection. We have WiFi here in the campground, so..... Speaking of pictures, if you have not seen photos of the devastating floods which hit Nashville last spring, click on this link: Nashville Flood Photos

After visiting the Hall of Fame, we drove around the city to see what we could see - it was just too hot to be walking around outside, with temps in the high 90's and the Heat Index at 108. We ended our day in Nashville with a nice dinner at Demo's, which is a great Steak and Spaghetti restaurant we visited last year and loved!

LOUISVILLE: We left Nashville on Sunday morning heading up to the Louisville area, to the campground we are curently staying in, in Shepherdsville, KY. After getting settled, we drove into the city to do some sightseeing. The first place we visited was the Louisville Slugger Bat Factory and Museum. This was a great take, and we truly enjoyed the tour of the factory. The factory is in operation 7 days per week and it turns out an unbelievable 1.8 million, yes, I said "MILLION", bats each year! Only a fraction of that number, about 88,000 bats go to players in the Majors and Minors. The rest of the bats are made for Retail Sales to sporting goods outlets, or are "Specialized" souvenir, or commemorative bats. They also make special PINK bats, which are used by most of the Major League teams on Mother's Day! One factoid I was not aware of is that bats are made of either white ash, or maple wood. Barry Bonds switched to a maple bat at the end of his career. To distinguish between the two, look at the label on the bat - on white as, the label is "burned" into the bat, like a "brand" on cattle. The Maple bat has a mylar label affixed to it because the wood is too soft to burn the label. Also, the label on the maple bat has a large "M" on it, to denote that it is MAPLE. All in all, this is one place that I would recommend to all lovers of baseball! The history here in the museum is "awesome".

After leaving the bat factory with our souvenir miniature bats, we drove down to the Churchill Downs Museum and Race Track. Again, we tried to visit here last year, but we were "rained out" (see "The Most Terrifying Day of Our Lives" from July of 2009). The tour of Churchill Downs is fascinating, but I, for one, couldn't wait to get out of the hot sun. This tour takes us outside for the whole tour, and it was soooo hot, I swear you could fry an egg on the pavement! If you visit Churchill Downs, be sure to take this tour, but do it on a cool day!! Anyway, the history here is as interesting as the history at the bat factory. There are dozens of barns, or stables, located out behind the track itself. During the racing season, these barns house thousands of horses. When we were there, there were only about 900 horses in the barns. We did not take the tour of the barns - not enough time. This is another "must see" in Louisville, if you should ever visit here.

Here are the album links. As I said, there may be duplicate pictures because we used two different cameras.

http://picasaweb.google.com/cbenoitiii/CountryMusicHallOfFameNashville?feat=directlink

http://picasaweb.google.com/cbenoitiii/CountryMusicHallOfFameNashville2?feat=directlink

http://picasaweb.google.com/cbenoitiii/AtTheLouisvilleSluggerFactory?feat=directlink

http://picasaweb.google.com/cbenoitiii/AtChurchillDowns?feat=directlink

http://picasaweb.google.com/cbenoitiii/ADayInLouisvilleKY?feat=directlink