Kentucky Horse Park

Some how, I have managed to live with in 90 miles of Lexington, KY my whole life and I never knew they had a fun horse park there and offer a variety of attractions from pony and horse rides to retired champions. . .ever wonder what happens to Derby winners after they're too old to mate? Well, apparently, some of them live out their senior days at the Kentucky Horse Park where they are paraded out into a small viewing area a couple times a day, where they can relive their youth through a video reel of their glory days and then get applauded by those of us who grew up cheering for the likes of Go for Gin and Funnycide.

 

 

We decided to make it an impromptu family outing, and what a fun day we had. We started by saying hi to a tiny pony that was wondering around outside the Kids' Barn (the pony wondered away before I got the picture taken).

 

Then the kiddies were able to put their dressage skills to work, Little Girl and Little Guy's cousin, Little C was a natural in tackling the jumping obstacles.

Oak Barrel Horses

 For some reason, Little Girl was obsessed with leaves this weekend, so you will notice her holding one in most of the pictures. . .it's not the same one, she picked up several through the course of the day.

9.3 hands tall! How tall is the Little Guy you ask? Well, we would all love to know, but he screamed and sank to the ground every time we put him near this picture for some reason.

He however, LOVED the random coloring station set up right behind the horse picture seen above.. .

 There are a number of museum type exhibits at the Kentucky Horse Park, I have to say, as much as I typically enjoy museums and the chance to learn about something new, I think this one could use a major overhaul. The amount of text to items to view was way too heavy on the text side. The first couple rooms were also very hard for younger children to even see the exhibits, they were set several feet below the pathway, so you had to look over a waste-high wall (which was over the kids heads). Lots of neat stuff, but if you wanted to read everything, I think you could easily spend the entire day just in this one building and never see an actual horse.


These two finally found something at their eye level and were eager to see what it was. The new portion of the museum did seem to be more welcoming for younger guests.

In preparation for an upcoming pony ride, the kiddies needed to hydrate and eat a quick snack, you can see the loving help
here as Little Girl helps Little Guy get a bite.

If you were expecting to see the Little Guy on the pony, well, you weren't the only one. He was scared to death and this is the closest he got to a horse all day. . .his sister though? Come to find out, she loves horses and ponies, and the normally shy child wanted to go up to every maned creature she saw during the day.

Since the Little Guy turned out to be a big scaredy cat, Little C took an extra go around the pony track.

See? No horse was too big for her to approach and pet. This was after the Horses of the World show, this was the Spaniard.

Little Guy found a someone to hug him while I snuck off to take a picture of his sister, thank goodness his aunt had free arms, he might have died if he had to stand for 2 minutes.

Did I mention they had a horse drawn trolley ride?

And after a long day of walking around, pony rides and more sun then any of us have seen in months, we went to Chuy's for dinner before we all went our separate ways.

It was a fun, long day, the kiddies and I were still tired most of the day today, so tired, they were in bed around 7:30pm, YEAH!