Staying with GrandmaAug 8, 2009
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Coca-Cola Museum
Coca-Cola Museum Memorabilia
Coca-Cola Soda Fountain
| On Monday, August 3, we arrived at Grandma’s RV Park along I-65, in Shepherdsville, Kentucky, which is a little over halfway between Elizabethtown and Louisville. We discovered that I-40 in Tennessee and I-10 between Houston and Beaumont aren’t, the only interstate highways heavily traveled by 18-wheelers, I-65 has it’s share as well. Grandma’s is a nice park, albeit nothing special. It is near I-65 and centrally located to some things we wanted to see in this area, plus it’s clean, with level pull-through sites, so it fits our needs. There is almost no grass, it is covered with crushed rock. A street runs along the east side and between the street and a fence, there is a strip of grass for a dog walk. There are a couple of Llamas, a few burros and Shetlands in a pasture beside the street, so it makes for some interesting watching for Honey Girl. For Tuesday, plans had been made to go visit a Horseshoe Casino in Elizabeth, Ind. We left the park around 8:30 with dark clouds looming on the horizon. What started out to be a 30 something minute drive turned into a 1-1/2 hr drive thanks to a bad storm. We had to go through Louisville, to get to Elizabeth and were in totally new territory in a rain/hail storm that dumped 6-1/2” of rain in a little over an hour. It was a little unnerving but we made it fine, although there were many cars stalled and flooded on the feeder roads and streets, along with many businesses, homes, Churchill Downs and the University of Louisville being flooded. We’d planned on a sumptious breakfast buffet and lots of jackpots at the casino. We were disappointed on all counts, so we cut our visit short and headed for home. Got here just in time for the second wave of storms with winds up to 60 mph and some rain, though nothing like we experienced on our trip. The rain continued intermittently through most of the night. Thursday, we went to Schmidt’s Coca-Cola Museum in Elizabethtown. This is the world’s largest, privately owned collection of Coca-Cola memorabilia in existence. The collecting was done by Bill Schmidt and his wife. Bill was a grandson of one of the first bottlers of Coca-Cola and ran the bottling facility in Elizabethtown for many years. The museum was started by him and first opened it's doors to the public in 1977. When we finished with the Coca-Cola museum, we went to “Swope’s Cars of Yesteryear” museum, also in Elizabethtown. This is a nice collection of some wonderfully restored automobiles dating from 1910 through 1964. There were approximately 80 cars on display from a 1910 Brush Roadster to a 1964 Chevy Impala SS convertible. Classic and antique car museums, along with train and airplane museums are my favorites. Leaving Elizabethtown, we went to the small town of Glendale, just out of Elizabethtown, that we were told had a very good restaurant “The Whistle Stop”. It was good information, the food was superb. There were also several antique/craft shops there and the Lindas enjoyed that. After leaving Glendale, we stopped in back in Elizabethtown. We’d read in one of the brochures about a walking tour in historic downtown, involving several historic characters from Elizabethtown during the 1800s and visitors to Elizabethtown during that period such as Jenny Lind, President James Buchanan and Carrie A. Nation. All of the characters were in period dress and at different stops along the way, appeared and gave some history about their life. The people portraying these characters gave good performances and brought their characters to life. It was something very different from anything I had done before and also interesting. Today, Friday, we went to the Jim Beam distillery in Clermont, Kentucky which is a short drive through the country. We enjoyed a bourbon tasting there and their gift shop then went our way. From there, we went to the Heavenhill Distillery Bourbon Heritage Center in Bardstown and went through their museum. This facility puts the unaged bourbon in White Oak barrels and stores these barrels in the barrelhouses, for aging. There was once a distillery at this location but due to a fire, is there no longer. These bourbon producing facilities are a part of Kentucky history, so we are interested in the part they have played and continue to play today. Returning to Shepherdsville, we went to a museum in the Bullitt County Courthouse, of local history. It is a small museum, but has a nice collection of items from around in Shepherdsville and surrounding Bullitt County. We also took pictures of some of the buildings in downtown Shepherdsville. We have nothing planned for this weekend but relaxing and taking it easy, which I do quite well. The park is full this weekend, due to the National Street Rod Show being held at the fairgrounds in Louisville this weekend. Several of the participants haul their street rods in those long enclosed trailers pulled by some very nice motorhomes. There are supposed to be around 13,000 entries in the show. One of the participants staying here at the park, said when he registered Wednesday, his number was in the 9000s. We will be here three weeks. |
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