Louisville Slugger Museum and American Printing House for the Blind (Fri.)

Today was another full day of sightseeing in Louisville.  Our first stop was the Louisville Slugger Museum and Factory tour.  They turn out between 2000 and 5000 wooden bats here each day for professional and recreational ball players, plus an additional 4000-5000 mini bats.  The bats are made from white ash and maple trees.  Ideal trees for bats are at least 80 years old.  They start with a "billet," which is French for "trunk of tree."  We got a tour through the factory and got to watch some of the processes, and our tour guide passed several different bats through the group for us to hold.  We were not allowed to take photos during the factory tour, but as we left the building I got the third picture through the window, which overlooks the street.  The first bat was made here in 1884. 

The museum has lots of bats from famous players.  John and Bridgette recently attended a Tampa Bay game, so I took a picture for them.

My favorite section was the "Big Red Machine," the bats of Pete Rose, Johnny Bench and Joe Morgan from the championship days of the Cincinncati Reds, which we followed back in the mid-70s.  Pete Rose was always my favorite baseball player.

We watched a short film (made me want to go out to watch a baseball game) and then walked through an area designed like a locker room, and then Joe sat on the bench in the dugout.

In addition to the museum, a temporary exhibit called "Big Leagues Little Bricks" is here until September.  This exhibit is baseball stadiums, bats and players all made out of legos.  It was amazing!

This next one is Wrigley Field, which used 57,960 legos.

Outside this building, at the entrance is a HUGE baseball bat, and embedded in the next building is a baseball.  We each got a mini bat for taking the tour, so Shooter will now have his first bat.

It was raining when we came out of this museum, and we headed to the car to drive around a little in the old downtown area, then we headed out to drive along the river.  Joe was determined to find the River Drive, and he did.  They have a beautiful walking bridge here call "Big 4 Bridge," and every time we've passed it we've seen people walking and biking across it, even in the rain.  We just admired it from afar.

We passed some nice parks on this drive, two marinas, some very nice real estate, and soccer fields that had irrigation pivots on them.  We thought that might be a good idea for Arizona.

We came upon a historic water tower that caught our eye, so we drove back to it.

We finally turned around and headed to our next destination, the American Printing House for the Blind      (APH).  This was an amazing place, and made us realize some of the obstacles the blind encounter.  This is the world's largest publisher of books for the visually impaired, and they do both Braille and enlarged print, two totally different concepts for the blind. This company was started in 1858, and it took them 6 years to complete their first book, due to the civil war.  That first production had a print run of 400 copies.   In 1959, APH completed a 142-volume edition of the World Book Encyclopedia, the largest Braille project ever undertaken.

Our tour guide gave us some history of APH and showed us quite a collection of tools for the blind.  Then we got to walk through the actual "factory."  There were not too many people working today, but we saw a few running some machinery, and some proofreaders working.  For proofreading, the blind person actually reads to the sighted person.  The Kentucky School for the Blind is right next door, and it looked like a pretty big campus.  The APH building is huge.  I think she said it had been added on to 14 times.

They had several different globes, all topographical so the kids could "feel" the mountains.  I thought this one was really nice.


Also on display was the piano Stevie Wonder (Steveland Morris) used when he attended the Michigan School for the Blind.

Our timing here was very fortunate.  Unbeknownst to us, they only give tours at 10:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m., and we got here at 1:55.  The tour lasted about 1 1/2 hours, then we wandered through their museum which held a lot of equipment from their early days.  At the end of the tour, we got to type our names on a Braille machine.  Braille is really just a set of raised dots, and their position determines what letter the dots represent.  I typed "Wilma," but Joe had to go all out and typed "David Froeschke," so he got to use up most of the alphabet!

This was a very interesting place and we learned a lot.  They had some goggles fixed up with different eye conditions so you could "see" what someone with that condition (glaucoma, macular degeneration [MD], etc.) sees, so we looked through the MD ones to get an idea of what Lucille deals with all the time. 

We left here about 4:30, tired and hungry.  We headed back across the river and found a Mexican restaurant, Senor Iguana, for dinner.  It was delicious; in fact Joe thought it was one of the best pork burritos he had ever eaten. 

But we were not done for the day yet.  We have been looking for a new cell phone for me, and we had passed a Verizon store in our search for dinner, so we went over there and talked to them.  Then called Eric for his thoughts on smart phones.  Then we went across the street to Best Buy, and ended up with 2 new smart phones, one for each of us.  We still are pretty sure we are not smart enough for smart phones, but we are going to try them.  We had excellent help there, and Felice Tempo, are sales guy who set us up with the new phones, was really great.  I'm sure we tried his patience almost to the breaking point.  Either that, or he's our new best friend.

We were there almost 2 hours, and by the time we drug ourselves home, we were both exhausted.  I went straight to bed because I knew it would be aggravating to try to figure out the new phones and I was too tired to even think about it, but Joe messed with his for a while.  So if no one hears from us for a few days, it will be because we don't know how to make a call.  We hope we can figure out how to answer it if it rings.

Around Louisville (Thurs.)

We had a pretty full agenda today and left the campground around 10:00 a.m.  (We can't seem to get to bed before midnight; we hate this stupid Daylight Savings Time out here.)   Our first stop was George Rogers Clark's homesite, here in Clarksville overlooking the Ohio River.

His home was right on the bluff overlooking the Ohio Falls on the river, on land given to him because of his military successes, which included Vincennes.  The falls really was a series of rapids caused by water flowing over ledges of hard limestone composed of vast numbers of fossils. 

The first rapids began in front of what is now downtown Louisville and coontinued to Sand Island, a distance of 2.5 miles and a drop of 26 feet.  When Dam was built in the 1920s, the river's flow was restricted and most of the rapids were covered with water.  Today, only remnants of these rapids remain below the dam. 

We left here and stopped back by the RV to get Joe's walking stick.  His right hip and left heel were hurting and he was having a hard time walking, so we hoped the walking stick might help.  Our next stop was at the "Falls of the Ohio State Park," where some busloads of school kids were enjoying a field trip with a picnic here.  We parked next to a pickup with a sign in his window that we probably need.

There were several people fishing on the "bank," and a boat or two out in the water.  We didn't walk down to the fossil beds

 but they have a very interesting history, going all the way back "387 million years ago when the earth was covered by water.  Vast numbers of corals, sponges and other sea creatures thrived under the prehistoric waters.  As the corals and other prehistoric sea inhabitants died, they were buried in layers of limey sediment that caused them to fossilize.  During the retreat of Ice Age glaciers, rushing melt-water carved the Ohi River basin and exposed the Devonian fossil beds, providing a unique view of the ancient coral sea floor, preserved in stone."

We worked our way through the interpretive center, and were glad we did because it explained a lot.  They even had a children's area.

As we left, we passed a statute of Lewis and Clark, with the inscription "When they shook hands, the Lewis and Clark Expedition began."  BTW, the Clark of Lewis and Clark was William Clark, brother to George Rogers Clark.

Our next adventure was Churchill Downs, so after a quick Quiznos lunch right across the street from the University of Louisville's Cardinal baseball/football stadium.

At Churchill Downs, we first walked into the track to get some information.  No racing today because they raced on Monday, the holiday.  Usually this time of year they race Thurs., Fri., Sat., and Sun.  We may come back tomorrow for the race.   

The ticket guy directed us over to the Kentucky Derby Museum, which was just at the end of all these buildings.  Joe heads through the "starting gate" to check out part of the museum, and one of the first exhibits was of some of the hats worn at the Derby.  I even picked out a favorite (black and red).

We had a really good walking tour

of this facility:  we got to see where the horses are saddled and walked prior to going out on the track, and the tunnel they walk through to the track.  Then we went out in the grandstands right next to the track, and we could see the barns in the back.  He said there were probably about 1300 horses in the barns right now.  He also told us that if nothing else, we should know who won the Derby the year we were born.

And the finish line.

But the best part was yet to come.  They always have one of the race horses here, and the one right now was the 2009 Derby winner, Mine That Bird (we actually watched that race on TV).  He is a beautiful horse.  A full-blooded miniature horse named Winston is always in residence here to provide company to the race horse.

We went through the

gift shop and Joe found a horse he thought he might be able to safely ride.  And we looked over the gold cups the Kentucky Derby winners receive (4 lbs of solid gold plus a jade base).

By now we were both dragging, so we headed back to the RV and had a little rest (I even took a short nap).  Then we went to dinner and made a Costco run, which was 10 miles east of Louisville.  I actually thought we might end up in Cincinnati, but GPS Lucille took us right to the store.  It was a full day, and we extended out time here by at least one more day so we can see a little more of what Louisville has to offer before we head on south/east.