Our Trip Blog

          Horses, horses, horses! I love horses! Well - at least I can say that horses are in my top ten favorite animals. Today, we went to one of the famous “horse farms in Kentucky”. We discovered that we had lucked out – yet again. The world equestrian games, which I have understood as the Olympics for horses, is taking place for the first time in the United States, at the exact horse farm that we were planning to visit. Although there was no Breed Show, basically a costume show with the horses dressed up, everything was free, and we still saw the Hall of Champion Show, and visited the Breed Stables. The Hall of Champions was basically a retirement home for famous horses and also a cemetery for famous horses. In the show, we saw horses that had won a variety of races. We didn’t know anything about these horses, for we are not into horse racing, but we thought that it was cool anyway. For you obsessive horse people, we saw “Cigar”, “Funny Cide”, “Da Hoss”, “Be a Bono”, and “Western Dreamer” in the show, and many other famous horses in the stables. We learned that Cigar was the greatest thoroughbred champion of all time, and was declared “Horse of the World” in the 1990’s. His seasons were amazing, with 16 straight wins in one season. He is now a 20 year old, but he thinks he is a two year old and is very feisty. Funny Cide won the Kentucky Derby and won two out of three races of the Triple Crown. Da Hoss is a thoroughbred who excelled in the turf mile division. This is when horses race on grass. Be a Bono is a quarter horse and supposedly very competitive. Western Dreamer was a harness racer and the first gelding to win the Triple Crown. Western Dreamer is a pacer, meaning that he moves the legs on the right together and the ones on the left together. This sort of looks like the horse is walking on two legs if you look straight on. In the stables, I was attracted to a blind horse named Staying Together, and he was very interesting to watch. He acted really happy when birds came and sang all around him, and he neighed and was really, as a volunteer said, “a sweetheart”.

          At the breed stables, there were rooms full of information about riding and vaulting. The riding room told you all about how to buy, take care of, and ride a horse. There were even two motorized horses that imitated the movement of the horse, and we rode them for a while. Then we went to the vaulting room. Vaulting is basically doing gymnastics on a horse, and we were able to try to do some of the positions on a stable cylinder, but I can’t imagine doing any of those positions on a moving horse! After that, we visited the horses, including an Arabian horse named Nikki that was in the corral. Before we came over he was walking along the middle and the stopped at a section of the bleachers to turn around and pause, as if to show himself off, then, on to the next section! It was very comical to watch, and we concluded that he was practicing for the show by himself, with no people!

          We visited some other of the horse museums, but then went out to the RV for lunch. The horse park had shuttles that were basically extended golf carts. After lunch, we caught one of these back to the American Saddlebred museum and enjoyed a well done exhibit on American Saddlebreds. None of us had ever heard of them before, and we eagerly absorbed information about these horses. We found out that these sturdy horses were used in the Civil War. They can do a variety of events and are called the five gaited horses for the different steps they do. Then we went to the International Horse Museum and went through a timeline and learned how people used horses from prehistoric times to the modern day. After seeing all that we could see, we caught another shuttle to go back to the RV.

          Now it was on to Ohio. We said good bye to Kentucky and crossed the bridge. We saw the Bengals stadium just as we crossed the bridge and we thought that was sort of cool. We arrived at my mom’s Cousin Laura’s house a little after five. In this family, there is Samuel (11), David (7), and Rebekah (6). Rebekah was quite excited about having three girls to play with, and Ben finally had some boy playmates after traveling all this time with us girls. We went our own ways to play and explore until it was time for a delicious dinner of tacos, and the girls ate outside, the boys in the kitchen, and the adults in the dining room. After dinner, we moved in and prepared for a restful night in a house!