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Kentucky Horse Park with Micah & EddieMay 28, 2007
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Eddie on the left, Micah on the right
| From Kentucky Horse Park Campground just north of Lexington, KY. After spending something in the neighborhood of 68 hours in middle Tennessee, doing a quick catch-up with family & a few other shopping / business details, we left just after noon yesterday headed north on I-65 with two additional faces in our midst. Last year we had considered having Cameron, our second youngest grandchild, fly-in from Los Angeles to Nashville, so that we could take he & Micah, our oldest grandchild who lives in Franklin, Tennessee, to the Dakota Badlands for a week-ten days. Under that plan, we would then have put both of them on a plane & flown them back to their respective homes. We really wanted to go with that plan, but after further thought, two significant issues arose. The first was that with Cameron being 7 & Micah being 8, they might be just a tad bit young yet to be flying solo, even with direct flights. The second issue was that there weren't any significant airports with cross-country service anywhere near the Badlands. As an alternative, we decided to take Micah & a local friend on this trip & then next summer hopefully we will be able to take Micah & his family on a trip somewhere from their home. Thinking that it would be a relief on the demand of the energy levels of Vicki & I if Micah had a friend to share some of his time with, we encouraged Brian & Heather, his parents, to invite a friend with whom Micah would enjoy the week. Micah chose to invite Eddie, his 6-y/o cousin through Micah's maternal lineage. From the reports that we heard from their respective parents, Micah & Eddie have been very excited since learning of these plans. Understanding the difficulty of kids to handle the concept of time too well, they were not told of the plans until recently. The first 24 hours have gone very well. They were pretty well consumed with Game Boys yesterday during the ride up, though they did like the idea of stopping at the Kentucky Welcome Center to have lunch & take a bathroom break without having to exit the bus. They both conked-out for awhile, Eddie longer than Micah. We arrived-in last night about 6:00 PM. After a little bit of confusion on my part of the physical relationship between the Kentucky Horse Park park & its campground, we finally found our site & got set-up. I made sure that the boys did their share of the set-up process by taking the jack pads to the respective corners of the bus, unrolling the patio rugs, unrolling the water hose, setting-up the chairs, etc. We then went inside & had an indoctrination as to where their clothes went, before & after they had been worn. Considering that we would be getting here fairly late in the afternoon & have a lot happening, Vicki had planned a dinner of individualized hoagie sandwiches & trimmings. From the first moment that we arrived, the boys were anxious to "go for a walk". After dinner, we did that, soon finding that a walk to the playground was a good distance, a suitable location to terminate the walk for awhile. During the walk, we had an indoctrination on how to be sure they could get back to the bus from the bathrooms & the playground, both of which are within sight of the bus. This campground is like none other that I have seen in my lifetime of camping, or at least last night it was. The campground has 260 sites with additional overflow space for probably another 30-40 camper units......there must have been 1,500-2,000 people scattered amongst the various sites, a very family environment. It was much like a convention of family reunions........ so many kids of all ages, so many golf carts, so many combinations of a tent & an RV of some kind on a site. The crowd was much more active than we typically see in campgrounds. In the first 18 hours that we have been here, we have already seen two parades. The first was the campground's Memorial Day parade last night as we were having dinner outside. That parade was led by a park ranger with his blue lights & low-pitch siren going full-strength, followed by an assortment of golf carts & various other non-highway vehicles. The second parade has been the constant flow of RV's, cars, trucks, etc, departing today, heading back home to end their holiday weekend. As we walked last night & noted the large number of sites marked with pink tags, indicating departure today, we knew that there would be the parade today followed by a much quieter crowd for the rest of the week. There is no indication yet of whether there will be very many new arrivals during the week; time will tell on that. After a night in which we all slept very well, we had breakfast of ham, scrambled eggs, toast & juice out on the picnic table this morning before Micah & Eddie went back to the playground for a little while. Vicki remained with them there while I took a quick shower. At the mention of "what now?", I mentioned going over to check out the pool, really without thinking that they were ready to swim yet. But at the mention of the pool, they both spoke up & asked to go swimming.....so we played ducks for awhile.....polar ducks at that....that water was ice cold to me, but kids being kids, it did not seem to faze them much. After an hour or so of swimming, back to the bus, lunch, a Scooby Doo movie while they had an opportunity to rest for awhile & then to bike riding. With instructions to ride the full circle, they chose instead to ride the semi-circle, half-way around, then back around the same way from which they had gone. We have now made it all the way up to 2:30 our first full day here & we have not yet heard any mention of the Horse Park itself yet. We fully intend to take in everything that there is to do here before we leave, but the challenge will be to space it out so that the second half of the week is not boring to you-know-who's. Sitting under the shade tree watching the wind blow is not as exciting for 6 & 8 year-old's as it is for xx-y/o's. |
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