It's Been Way Too Long Since My Last Post of How I Spent My Summer Vacation

Whew, it's been a long time since my last post. I never know if I want to do a total recap in one post, or spread it out over several posts. This time I think I will spread this out over several posts. Remember when you were in school and had to write an essay about your summer vacation? I don't ever remember having to do that, but those sitcom kids were always given that assignment. I seemed to get assignments like what is your favorite color and why. Seriously??? Those required way too much thinking on my part. Reporting on summer vacation would be easy peasy compared to that one. Any how. My summer was interesting. In June, we bought a boat to replace the one we had lost in Superstorm Sandy. This involved two trips to Baltimore before we were finished. The first trip was an early morning trip to go and actually look at the boat and do a quick sea trial. I'm glad I went along for that. I did get some time to stitch and work on my Fun Every Day pieces. We decided then and there that this was the boat for us. We had been actively looking online and in person for months. We left that day with our instructions on how and where to send the balance of the funds and an estimated timeline for pick up. That took about two weeks. The Monday before we went on our vacation we went back to Baltimore to pick up the boat, towed it to the Jersey Shore and returned home to Pennsylvania. I think we were in the truck about 8 hours that day. Again, some more time to work on Fun Every Day.

The following Saturday we went to Kentucky to visit our son the grad student. We stayed in a nearby (two blocks away) hotel. We were busy all week. We went to Mammoth Cave and did a tour. We went to Keeneland to watch the horses exercise and have breakfast at the track cafeteria. Great food and wonderful photographs of horses. Another day we went hiking in Daniel Boone National Forest. Our 3 hour hike lasted about six hours. I learned several things from that experience. One is to wear hiking boots. And, take more water than you think you will ever need. And, don't leave the snacks in the trunk of the car. And, do not carry your purse (yes, my purse) but instead have a proper backpack. Oh, and when the trail map shows the trail leading out of the back of the parking lot, that does not mean you need to cross the road to get to the trail. This was our biggest mistake of the day. Apparently, GPS had taken us to the wrong parking lot. And when we got out we could see a trail across the road. And, there was a sign on that trail for the trail we were looking for. My son assumed that the trail map in the book was outdated and we set off. On something called Rough Trail (not the thing for this overweight, arthritic, out of shape mama to do) which explains the need for hiking boots. Now, it had rained the day and night before. So, the trail is wet and sandy. Oh, and did I mention it was hot and humid? So we hiked for about two hours and finally came to a sign that said our destination was 3/4 mile away. We hiked for about another hour and came to another sign that said our destination was 1 mile away. That seemed wrong, but apparently we had made a wrong turn somewhere. We finally reached our destination and began what was to be the difficult part of the hike. I thought we had already done that after crawling over some rocks on my hands and knees.

We continue on our hike and I am not so sure that the map we have is accurate. My feeling was that the map was so wrong for the first part of the hike, how could it possibly be right for this part. So, now, I am hot, and panicky. We had to climb up several flights of stairs and walk about another hour to get back to the road. I must say that this is beautiful country. I truly enjoyed the breaks we took to look at the scenery. I was getting very tired of looking at where I was putting my feet. We finally arrived back at the road, or more accurately a road. And we are pretty sure that we know where we are on the map. But, just to be safe, we flagged down a passing Ranger truck and asked them for directions back to our car. They told us that we would have to hike back a mile and a half over Rough Trail to get back to where we left our car. The ranger told us that we had already hiked 5 or 6 miles ( this was supposed to be a 3 mile hike.) They also gave us water since we didn't have any more with us. It tasted and felt so good to drink that water. We get to the parking lot, where we should have parked. I look at my husband and my son and tell them I cannot go back the way we came. Please, go get the car and come back to get me. It took them about an hour, but they did it. My husband said that we were about 15 minutes by car from where we had originally parked. My son told me that there was no way we could have gotten there on the road we were going to take. Thank goodness for the park rangers. I did learn several lessons on that hike. If we had been on the correct trail we would not have seen this:

I would like to go back to Daniel Boone National Forest and hike some more. It is truly beautiful and I would like to see more of it. We learned that if the map looks wrong, we are probably in the wrong place. We also went to Churchill Downs. I only gambled on one race. I just wasn't that into feeding my money into a machine and losing it. I did like watching the horses race and all the ceremony that accompanies each race. We went to look at the horses before each race and they were paraded around in a ring.

And then back to watch them on the track. I had heard a horn blow before each race, I think at post time. I was at the track itself one time the horn was blown and saw a gentlemen in a red jacket come out and blow the horn. I had assumed that it was a recording. A very interesting place. And, if you are in the market for a hat or fascinator that was the place to buy one.

One day the guys went fishing. I went shopping. I went to a needlework and yarn shop in Lexington called The Stitch Niche. I did buy some fibers that I needed but not much else. It seems to be geared more toward knitters and crocheters than stitchers. And from there I went on to Berea to The Kentucky Artisan Center. That was a really nice place with all Kentucky made products. I bought a birdhouse for our back yard. A couple weeks later I saw that wrens had taken up residence there and could hear their babies. And then I went to the town of Berea and did more shopping. The guys met me at Papa Leno's for dinner. We had pizza. It was so good, I'm not sure what they do, but it's like the bottom of the pizza is dusted in garlic powder, so you get a mild garlic flavor from the crust. And we did lots of shopping in and around Lexington. If you can't find it in Lexington, I don't think it exists.