Kentucky: Day One
Getting There is Half the Battle.
Flying is not my favorite activity. Check that… I have no issues with actual air travel, it’s the process. Econo class was not designed for anyone to travel in comfort, never mind 6’3”, 300 lb (I’m working on it) dudes. This particular trip was fine until we boarded in Chicago for the second leg of our flight. We sat… and sat… and sat… Something about baggage handlers and lightning and… whatever guy, I’ve been huffing jet fuel in the back of the plane here for the better part of an hour and I’m starting to hallucinate. Once we backed away from the gate and awaited the signal to begin taxiing, we set off, apparently to drive to Detroit so we could take off there?
At any rate, once we landed in Lexington, got our luggage and our sweet rented Chrysler Pacifica minivan (I officially apologize for making fun of minivans my whole life… this thing is awesome) we set off for the hotel… where we met Brook. Because the world is a tiny, tiny small place, of course the hotel clerk in Lexington Kentucky used to live in a microscopic town a half an hour from where we live. And of course that led to a half hour long oral history report of Lexington, the entire state of Kentucky, Colonel Sanders, John Swift’s silver mine… all at 1:30 in the morning. I wondered a couple of times if I might still be hallucinating from the jet fuel.
Daylight comes
After a quick sleep, we set out today in our super-chic rented minivan to get the lay of the land and check out Lexington and the surrounding areas… and make a trip to Costco for water and snacks. Once the essentials were procured, we headed toward Lexington’s ‘Distillery District’ for lunch. The James E. Pepper 1776 Distillery houses Goodfellas Pizza. If you’d ever told me that one of the best slices of pizza I’d ever had would come from Kentucky, I would have accused you of sitting in the back of a plane huffing jet fuel for too long.
According to my vast knowledge of Lexington (gained from about 20 minutes sitting in traffic this morning), there is definitely a very strong “artsy” feel to the city. There are murals scattered throughout the city, including this one on the wall of the building adjacent the Pepper Distillery and Ethereal Brewing:
The whole complex includes bunch of bars and breweries with a lot of outdoor seating and the whole place felt like somewhere I could drop an anchor and just hang.
The Break Room… which I don’t think is as divey as it looks.
I Expected More Horse Farms
As we left the Distillery District, we both agreed that we expected Lexington to me more… I don’t know… “horsey”. A quick Google of “Lexington Horse Farms” took us to the Old Frankfort Pike. Kentucky Highway 1681 is exactly what I envisioned horse farm territory to look like... and then some. We even stopped off and made some friends along the way.
From the nibble marks along miles of fencing, this is apparently normal horse behavior.
This girl scared the living bejeezus out of me about a minute before this. She snuck up on me (to the extent that a nearly seven foot tall, half-ton creature can ninja up on anyone) and took a light nibble of my camera while I was pointed in the other direction.
She played shy at first, but we became good friends.
So by sunset on day one, we were both feeling the effects of a long day’s travel and a short night’s sleep. We called it a day, got dinner at a delightful little restaurant called “Kroger” and shut it down until tomorrow.