Our vacation (part two)

I won't bore you all with the minutiae of our trip, but I will regale you with some of the highlights of our journey into Kentucky...

The following day we went into Lexington, but along the way we stopped into the Newport Aquarium for an hour or so, just to work the kinks out, after driving for a while. It's a really beautiful part of the state, basically just on the border between Ohio and Kentucky. As we were walking along the river, we noticed a tattoo artist (well, he does temporary tattoos) and we thought that since we were on vacation we may as well be 'wild and crazy' and get one tattoo each.

Josh's, obviously, is a panda bear. Mine, however, reflected the kind of mood I was in at the time, and since I was eagerly anticipating the most recent referral batch (and we all know how that went) I decided that the most appropriate one for me was the Chinese symbol for "patience". For the rest of the trip I had that on my arm, and even went in for a touch-up on our way back north to visit with Connie, Krista, Sam, and Robin.

We were in Kentucky from Sunday until Wednesday and had a blast! We saw the Toyota plant and did the tour which was REALLY well organized. We also went down to Bowling Green and saw the Corvette plant and did that tour as well. If I had to make a choice and only do one of them, I would definitely do the Toyota tour again.

While we were in Louisville, we went to see the Louisville Slugger museum which was ok, but the tour was a bit too long. After we saw the museum, we decided to go and get a bite to eat and we were stunned at how run-down downtown Louisville was. Being dumb Canadians, we just naturally assumed that the downtown core in big cities would be full of life as they are here but were really struck at how bereft of life they really are. It certainly was an eye-opener!

We also went to the Maker's Mark distillery and did the tour of the facility. It was fascinating learning how they came up with the name, the seal, etc., but unfortunately there were no taste tests. We did, however, come home with a couple 'samples'. Josh even had the opportunity to dip his own bottle and seal it. FUN!

On Wednesday we went to Lost River Cave and did a cave tour! That was SO much fun. All in all, Kentucky was a blast. :)

The following day was a travel day and we made our way from Bowling Green all the way back up to Dayton and rested up for our encounter with the A-Team (that's Josh's term for any adoption people that we've met during the process). :)