Today was yet another fantastic day on the roads of this great country of ours! We started out with an amazing continental breakfast at the Best Western where we stayed (review), and then it was off to Churchill Downs.
When we arrived at Churchill Downs, it was a beautiful place. We toured the museum, watched the circle vision movie about the history of the Kentucky Derby, and toured the facilities. It was pretty cool seeing all of the history of the Derby and thinking of how many people gather there on one day for one 2 minute race. You can see of couple of the pictures that we took while we were exploring posted here. After our tour we were hungry so we decided to eat at the Kentucky Derby Cafe. The lunch was enjoyable as you can read in Emily’s review.
After finishing our lunch it was off to Downtown Louisville to visit the Louisville Slugger Museum. We knew we were close because as we approached we saw the world’s tallest bat that stood in front of the building. We got to tour the museum and see the history of how they made bats and who used the different bats throughout the years. We also got to tour the plant where they still make the bats. It was neat to see all of the wood dowels set aside for the major league players of today. For all of you baseball fans out there I would definitely recommend checking this place out if you are ever in the Louisville area.
After getting our fill of the Louisville Slugger Museum we got back in the car to make our way to Chicago. Emily had researched this old time ice cream parlor in Columbus, IN, that originated in the early 1900s. We were both curiously excited to check this place out, so we ventured to this old time city. Well, according to the books and magazine articles that have been written, Zaharako’s was a quaint parlor that served ice cream and other candied treats. When we got there it was like in the movies when someone walks in and the music stops. When they said it was from 1900, I didn’t know that meant it hadn’t been cleaned since 1900. This place was dirty, and the one man who was serving ice cream for the day had one speed, park. After waiting for about 15 minutes to order some ice cream, we realized that he was a good 50 feet away, and if we wanted to get to Appleton before vacation ended, we could not do that and get ice cream. So we left Zaharako’s, never to return.
Disappointed with Columbus we needed to redeem ourselves. Thus we decided to explore a little town in Indiana called Zionsville. The town was pretty and quaint. We had a wonderful dinner at The Friendly Tavern, took some pictures of the town and made our way to Chicago. Emily wanted me to tell you of this fantastic store that we found in Zionsville called The Gift Horse. To me it looked like every other store that sold Hallmark type stuff, but Emily said it was awesome so I guess I have to believe her! We arrived in Chicago around 10:30 and crashed. Stay tuned for tomorrow!