We made one additional overnight stop on our way out of Georgia, this time in Louisville.
What We Did:
Louisville Slugger Factory Tour – we aren’t baseball fans so we weren’t sure we would enjoy it but our visit turned out to be very cool. All the bats are produced at this facility and you can see the production lines working even on the weekends. For those who prefer their bats with a side of bourbon, the factory is conveniently located next to Louisville’s Whiskey Row.
Louisville Slugger started as a side hustle for the Hillerich & Bradsby furniture company. All the wood is still sourced from a small area in Pennsylvania where it’s cut into tubes called billets. Different wood has different properties and performance. The billets are shipped to Louisville, where they transform the humble wood tubes into home run delivery systems. The 30 minute tour was informative, showing computerized machinery used to create custom bats for professional players and lathes tracing a master template to churn out consumer bats. Bats are moved through the production stages using old school wooden carts dubbed “batmobiles”. The players who have signed contracts with Louisville Slugger visit the factory to design bats to their exact specifications. In addition to the factory tour, there are exhibits about baseball history and the players who have used their bats. You can also strike a pose with an actual game used bat, which we did with Brian gripping Darryl Strawberry’s Mets bat and Tracey holding a surprisingly heavy Babe Ruth bat.
Kentucky Derby Museum and Churchill Downs Track Tour – like baseball, we don’t follow horse racing so mostly what we knew of the Derby was crazy hats and mint juleps. The Kentucky Derby Museum highlights the long history of the oldest running sporting event in USA. While it’s now a month long party, in the early 1900s Churchill Downs faced significant financial challenges that threatened its existence until track president and innovative marketer Matt Winn stepped in to keep the Derby alive.
There were exhibits about the vital role African Americans played in racing, jockeys on diet plans stricter than a fashion model’s, and the mighty Secretariat, the fastest hooves in history. It was also interesting to learn about Penny Chenery, Secretariat’s breeder and owner and her influence in an era when women were expected to stand by their men, preferably while stirring something on the stove.
We also did a grandstand and track tour (advance purchase required if you’re thinking of going). In addition to the famous one mile dirt track, there is an inner turf track for hosting grass races.
Where We Stayed: Charlestown State Park, located just across the river in Charlestown, IN. A little short for our rig but we managed. This was our first state park as full timers, although it hadn’t fully opened for the season and had only 30 amp service with no water or sewer. Turns out we wouldn’t have connected to water anyway since the overnight temps were in the 20s. We saw plenty of campers that weren’t designed for freezing weather, along with a few hearty crazy tent campers. Our neighbor’s van had an extension cord running in the window, presumably powering some sort of portable heat source (and sporting a cool paint job reminiscent of Scooby-Doo’s Mystery Machine).
Where We Ate:
Derby Cafe
Kaelin’s 80/20