Day 1 of our Spring Break Road Trip didn’t give us the early start that I would have liked. Because I had a state executive board meeting for my KKI teacher’s group, we weren’t able to leave until after noon on Saturday. I know that a lot of people would have waited to leave until the next morning, but not us. Thankfully, we did leave on Saturday, because overnight there was a huge snowstorm that came through in the early hours of Sunday morning, leaving more than a foot of snow in St. Louis!
After leaving the St. Louis, Missouri and O’Fallon, Illinois areas we were horribly bored by the sites on the road for hours. The sky was extremely overcast which made everything even more blah, boring, and brown than it already was. This boredom continued for nearly 300 miles. We rarely even saw an exit sign for anything other than a side road. Gas stations were few and far in between and I wouldn’t even consider stopping at the one or two gas stations that we saw before nearly reaching the Kentucky state line.
Then came this beautiful site, the skyline of Louisville, Kentucky. To be honest, it’s not a picture that I took, but does show what we saw. The photographer is Jack R. Perry, a professional photographer who specializes in Ohio photography. Even though it was getting late and already well past dark, we were wide awake after seeing this beautiful vision in person.
As we drove on through Louisville, one of the first things that caught my eye was The Mohammed Ali Center. It was so hard to resist the urge to get off the interstate and go exploring. We tried hard, but once we caught site of the top of a beautiful old church we couldn’t fight the urge to explore any longer. Although we never found the church, we did find several other beautiful churches. After researching, we came to the conclusion that it might have been St. Joseph Catholic Church. While off the interstate and exploring, we found a huge Girl Scouts facility, a really cute coffee shop, the University of Louisville, and Churchill Downs.
I grew up in race horse country and driving around Churchill Downs gave me the opportunity to share a little race history and knowledge with my daughter. She fell in love with the beauty of the whole facility and can’t wait to go back, in the daylight and on a race day to see the ponies run. I didn’t think dear daughter was old enough to even enter the track, but with a little research on the Churchill Downs website showed me just how family friendly they are.
After much fun and sight-seeing, we decided that our fun must come to an end. We found our way back to the interstate and vowed to make a return trip to Louisville. There was way too much that we didn’t see and awaited our exploration.
We traveled on some more. Our goal was to stop in Lexington, Kentucky for the night. Using my Holiday Inn Rewards Points to pay for my room, saved me at least $140 cash,including the tax for my preferred room. However, being the ever frugal MS Do that I am, I chose to stay in Frankfort instead of Lexington. Why the change in plans? The room in Lexington was going to cost me 15,000 points but the room in Frankfort was only 10,000 points. The way I viewed the difference was that I was saving 5,000 points for a 1/2 night at some other point on our trip.
After a long and busy day, we settled in for a long deserved sleep and had dreams of more exciting plans for the next day!
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