Megan's birthday present (Lexington, KY)

Jeremy makes trips up to Lexington, KY every so often for work. He was due for another trip the first week of June, so for Megan's birthday present, Megan and I tagged along. Some of you might not know this, but Megan loves horses. She is always asking for one ( though I tell her, what little girl doesn't want her very own horse) and enjoys anything that has a horse on it. Lexington, KY is known as the horse capital of the world, so what a perfect place to take a little girl who loves horses. She was very excited. The day after we got there, we took her to the Kentucky Horse Park. I don't think I have seen so many horses in one place, ever. We saw miniature horses, artisan Egyptian horses, carriage rides, ponies, racing horses, and even a horse cemetery. (Now did you know that when they bury a horse, they bury its head, heart, and hooves only. This is suppose to be the essence of the horse. The rest they cremate and throw its ashes around the park and track for good luck) This is just an example of some of the things that we learned. The highlight of the day was horseback riding. This is what Megan was looking forward the very most.
Here is Megan on her horse named Riddick. My horse's name was Kamikaze. Megan was a little nervous when she was on the horse at first. It kept moving around the area, which was OK. I kept telling Megan that when we were on the trail, the horse would do quite well. The trail leaders assured Megan that Riddick was their most gentle horse and knew the trail very well. When we got started, Megan relaxed and both her and Riddick did great. When we were done, Megan wanted another time slot. I said not today, let's just enjoy the rest of the horses. Doesn't she look great on that horse?

Here she is again on Riddick. Megan is a little nervous here as Riddick goes down to get a drink of water. It was more then just Megan and I going on the trail, so we had to wait in this area, until everybody was saddled up. I haven't been on a horse for about 18 years so I was a little nervous myself, but we all did great. They were really well trained horses.

This little miniature horse is named Soapy. They call him Soapy because it looks like he has soap suds all on his back. Megan just loved this miniature horse. She was determined to convince Jeremy that we needed to get one of our very own. She even tried to say that a miniature horse would make a great lawn mower, eating all the grass all of the time. As you can guess, Jeremy did not see the light in her logic. Go figure.

At the horse park, they had a section of these exotic champion show horses. This is some Egyptian horse that was there. Megan really liked this one, because they shared the same birthday. I have to tell you, I have never felt such a smooth and soft horse. Even her nose ( yes most these show horses were fillies), was very soft. They were very beautiful horses.

In Lexington, they also had a children's museum that was not to far from the hotel. Since we have a pass ( which can get us into most children's museums around the country), we decided to take Megan there. This is a moon exhibit. Almost looks like Megan is living on the moon. Megan says often that she is going to be the first woman to step on the moon. That is one thing about living in Huntsville, NASA is located here so Megan learns a lot about space and rockets.

As Megan and I drove back to Alabama, we stopped at some caves in Kentucky. This area is called "Cave City", because of the many different caves there are. The cave we chose to tour was called, Diamond Cave. It is called this because the guy that discovered it thought he hit jackpot by finding all these diamonds that were through out the cave. He was mistaken. They weren't diamonds at all, but they were colorful calcite that was all over the cave. We learned many things going through it and loved looking at all the stalactites and stalagmites.

We had a good time. It was a great trip. We were hoping to go to a couple of the horse farms around Lexington, but after our awesome day at the horse park, it rained the rest of the time we were there. It is a good thing we decided to do the park first.