day 5 - lexington, ky to mammoth cave national park, ky

After sleeping in a bit today, we headed off to Kentucky Horse Park, where horses of various breeds - as well as a few very famous champions - live and perform in some live shows. The park is also home to the International Museum of the Horse, which had some rather lovely exhibits.

We were lucky to get there in time for the show at the Hall of Champions, which showed off these four very amazing horses:

CH Gypsy Supreme - American Saddlebred

Cigar - Thoroughbred racehorse

Funny Cide - Thoroughbred racehorse, 2003 Derby and Preakness winner

Western Dreamer - Standardbred pacer

Afterwards, another show showed off some different equine sports, including endurance riding and dressage.

Finally, we got to see some really adorable miniature horse mares and foals! The little fillies were so fuzzy and cute.

Lunch was a late treat at Claudia Sanders' Dinner House. Claudia Sanders is the wife of Colonel Sanders, of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame. We had an absolutely amazing meal there - fried chicken of course, and other Southern favorites. The restaurant also has a gift shop, where you can buy her recipe book. There, we discovered the delight of creamed pull candy, which is like the sweetest, creamiest lump of butter that melts cool on your tongue.

Our last major destination in Lexington was Churchill Downs, home of the Kentucky Derby. It's actually quite a lovely racetrack, especially since when we went there weren't any races currently running, so it was nice and peaceful.

The racetrack is home to the Kentucky Derby museum, which has some magnificent exhibits about the race, which was most recently won by the 50-1 longshot Mine That Bird, ridden by Calvin Borel to an upset victory. So here I am with Mine That Bird (whose jockey here does not really resemble Calvin...but they tried).

Monuments to racehorses who died tragically: Barbaro, the 2006 Derby winner, and Eight Belles, the 2008 Derby runner-up (a filly).

They also keep a resident racehorse there, along with a companion horse, in this case, Perfect Drift and Winston.

Pictures of the track:

After our Churchill Downs visit, we said goodbye to Lexington and headed south towards Mammoth Cave National Park where we planned to spend the evening. (With this drive, we were now officially in Central Standard Time.)

Spotted along the road to Mammoth Cave: Dinosaur!

Also, Big Mike's, a gift shop that sells rocks of all kinds.

Finally, we got to the campground. Mammoth Cave has both several campgrounds and a hotel with gift shops and restaurants, as well as its own gas station. We had dinner at their restaurant, Travertine, where I had a lovely jumbo fried shrimp and Roy a country fried steak. While not quite up to par with our other restaurants, it was much better than I expected for a restaurant at a national park.

We took a quick hike to see an overlook with a view over the Green River.

Then, we set up camp and went to bed for the night.