roadtrip-day 2

helllooooo, kentucky!

I woke up at 930 and couldn't get back to sleep, so I hung out and let matt sleep for another hour. we'd hoped to leave by 1030am, but that just didn't happen. I felt bad for the tired clothes-forgetting driver!

after our gino's disaster the night before we were QUITE pleased to happen upon a sonic and grab our breakfast. mmmmm sonic. next stop, the pharmacy shaped like a mortar and pestle. I thought it was fun since, y'know, pharmacists actually used to use those for medicine. And of course since I've had to use them before in real life. My back hurt and Matt had convinced me to get some of those stick on heat pads (even though I'm like 98% certain I'm allergic to the adhesive) but alas, it was closed.

next we went to the kentucky horse park to look around and see man o' war's grave. here is where we got our first extra kind person--the man charging for parking was like "oh, if that's all you're going to see I won't charge you!" we went to the gift shop and matt got a horse-shaped bottle opener, and we saw the statue of the horse. I tried to tell matt that there was something about if there's a statue of a man on a horse the number of legs raised symbolizes something, but apparently that's hooey.

we putzed around here for a few and then took some pictures across the street. one of these is definitely a "kentucky" picture for me. it was pretty. and again, the sky was BEAUTIFUL. it rained a little the night before but cleared up about 45 minutes after we left the hotel. it worked out that we slept in. :)

next was the disappointing visit to bardstown, ky. on the way we realized that we were on the bourbon trail, and we decided to visit the next distillery we came upon. and that, my friends, was wild turkey. we figured it would be closed, and it was, but we took pictures and matt put our name on the guest log book. it was pretty cool to see the place, even just from the outside, and the wild turkey ended up playing a role later, too.

so once we arrived in bardstown we wanted to go to the oscar getz museum of whiskey history, but they closed early that day. it SAID they were open, even on their sign. I called and left a message telling them how disappointing it was that they closed half an hour early (especially when they're only open for 4 hours on sundays). we took a few pics and I had the brilliant idea to go to a bar and actually have a bourbon in kentucky. the old talbott tavern was less than a mile away and the nice bartender helped us select bourbons that neither of us had ever had. I liked the elijah craig and we also tried the rock hill farms. yum!

slightly tipsy (me) and not at all phased (matt) we went to elizabethtown, ky to see the approximate cannonball. long story short, the cannonball got lodged in the building in the late 1800s, when the building burned down a woman laid claim to the cannonball, and when a new building was built she requested that the cannonball be put back as near as possible to its original place. SUPER random. but kind of neat. we also went to elizabethtown because of the roadtrip in the movie. And no, we did not find exit 63b or whatever. (ps, part of the movie was shot in oklahoma!)

then it was time to visit more states...we went through indiana to corydon, in and it's constitution elm. in 1816 men signed indiana's first constitution under that tree. it's died since and a little building has been placed over the preserved trunk. it's just in the middle of a neighborhood, so random. we had a bit of trouble finding it though and in the meantime visited the town square. very cool. the o'bannon family was apparently very instrumental in founding/developing that city.

at this point we were still almost four hours from our destination, so we hot footed it to belleville, il as quick as we reasonably could. and there we saw my wittle and her boyfriend steve. we drank boulevard at the neighborhood bar and ate pizza, took "family" shots, picked songs on the juke box and the girls played pool while the guys did machine-bowling. we had a GREAT time. we stayed far later than we should have, but I hardly ever get to see ashley, so that made it wonderful. and they also have a pet named hazel--a dog. we thought that was a fun coincidence. :)

we arrived at our union station hotel, unloaded our things and craaaaashed.