A day in Louisville

[fbhjr]

Yesterday we headed back over to pallid_regina & hms_ennui’s place where we were cooked a very nice brunch and had an interesting discussion with Pallid_Regina’s dad.

Then we set off for Locust Grove. One of the reasons it is famous is because George Clark, the older brother of the Clark in Louis and Clark and the founder of Louisville, went there to die.

(OK, it’s not like the elephant graveyard where elephants go to die. This is different. Only one revolutionary commander actually went there to die and that is because it was his sister’s house and he didn’t have anywhere else to go.)

One of the most amazing things to me had nothing to do with the historic site at all. When we got there, there was another car just like mine.

I’ve been driving mine for 3 months now and have never seen the same kind of car outside of the dealers lot. So, to see one “in the wild” that is the same model and color was very unusual. It was from Illinois, so it was a good ways from home too.
I didn’t see who drove it because when we came out it was gone.

Anyhow, the museum is on what is left of the farm. It was very hot, about 95F/35C.


But, we still wandered the fields and gardens. I kept mostly to the shade.


HMS found a random Frisbee lying around the historical site, but he seemed to have fun with it.


There were some interesting plants and big bees/hornets/flying stinging things I can’t ID.


pallid_regina & hms_ennui do historical events there and know the place well.


Under the “it will be cooler there” theory, we walked down to the spring building.


It was cooler and my wife and I were happy about that.


I swear I saw a frog hopping about in the spring next to the house, but we couldn’t find it again.


There were lots of damp places it could have gone.


It is nice there, but hot.


We did watch the movie there, in the air conditioning.
My wife and I have both done AV at a museum. So, this sign made a lot of sense to us.


Then we went on the actual guide tour.


This log cabin wasn’t originally on the property. They don’t even seem to know where it came from. My theory involves twisters, Kansas and little dogs. I didn’t see any feet sticking out from under it, but it’s been a while...

(OK, they said it was from a neighboring farm, they just couldn’t remember which one...)

The nice part about the tour is you get to go into the main house.


It is more colorful than most people expect from a 200 or so year old place.

But, they’ve done analysis of the paint left in the walls from then, and this is the color.

This is the revolutionary leader who came to live here with his sister. He had a difficult life and it clearly shows.

This is me taking the previous picture...

(Because I think it is funny that my wife has started taking pictures of me taking pictures of things. Perhaps to show me how often I’m doing it...)

He had a wheel chair. I found the 200 year old design interesting.


The paint was very expensive and they used it in the places where they wanted to show off.


These are the folks that built the place.


And, of course, we found a sword.

(They’re everywhere!)

It belonged to this guy who was the son of the builders.

We were told he was a drunk, disorderly, abusive embezzler of government funds and at one point needed to sneak out of New Orleans to avoid being arrested and thrown in jail.
I guess his wife bailed him out time and time again until his brother told her to stop.

Our tour guide said he’s waiting for someone to make a movie out of it. I’d go see it.

Anyhow, more green expensive paint in the main entertaining room.


When the restored the room, they found a small sample of the original wallpaper. They sent it to the company that made it 200 years ago in London and were able to buy more of that pattern. The remaining piece on the wall showed them were to start so they were really able to restore it to how it looked originally.


The upstairs family rooms were not as fancy.

But, when the president stopped by for a visit, he stayed in the fancy rooms, not the family rooms.

We wandered back through the gardens after the house.


I hadn’t noticed this sign until we were leaving.

Of course, it makes me say “So, if I carried a bazooka around this historic site it would be OK as long as I didn’t try and hide it?”

I did buy some maps as they had a good collection of reproductions and I love maps.


Because I hadn’t bought any books, which is very rare for me, we stopped at a Barnes and Noble bookstore.
I was very happy to see they had the science/nature section next to women’s interests and the art next to men’s interests. So many other places get that wrong.

I’m told I might be biased about that since my grandmother got her degree in physics and chemistry 100 years ago. But, this is the way it has seemed to me.

Then, we went into downtown Louisville for dinner. Louisville specializes in bridges that don’t connect to things. This would be important to us later.


But, at that point it was nice out and we had a good view of the river.


Louisville also has the “Yum” center.

That seemed appropriate for going to dinner, but I was told it is a sports place.

There was a lot of driving about to get where we were going. I guess maybe a light I went through was less than totally green, or yellow, but we got there.


It was a Persian Restaurant and very good. I think it was the best hummus I’ve had and the rest of the food was good. They got my wife’s order wrong, so brought us some pot scrapings to apologize. That probably doesn’t sound anywhere near as good as it tasted....

After dinner we tried to get out of Louisville. But, some of the roads were shut down. Some were not shut down, but the ways to get to them were.
And, a big storm was just starting.
The result of this was we were forced to go to Indiana as every way off of the highway before then was closed.


We tried to get back several ways and there seemed to be an active conspiracy of road work to keep people in Indiana.


We could see the way back, just not get there.


Finally, after several attempts, we found a bridge going back.


That was when it really started to rain.


The drive back was “interesting” as some of the lightning strikes were followed by thunder less than a second later.


Several places lost power, but not their house. So, we dropped them back at home where their dogs were happy to see them.

By then the storm had passed, so we got back to the hotel with no problem.

Comments

[ravena-kade.livejournal.com]

wow, that was a very full vacation day. I love looking at historical houses.

[fbhjr.livejournal.com]

There really was far more "I don't know, what do YOU want to do" going on then it seems the way I wrote it...

[morgan-lafaye.livejournal.com]

What an interesting place. The grounds are quite nice. Glad you two are having fun.

[pallid-regina.livejournal.com]

Actually Brian IS making a film of the story of those two people. Lance is in it! Brian is not so great on the self-promotion, hey I'm doing this cool thing front so there's no way you could have known that at the time.

So. Much. Green. I still can't get over how much green there is in the house now. When we are there for an event we're outside the whole time, I realized I hadn't been in the house since pre-renovation/repainting and OMG ALL THE GREEN.

That was a serious lot of green.

Green.

[peterb.livejournal.com]

What make / model is your car?

[fbhjr.livejournal.com]

It is a Toytat Prius C.
I'm told they've been available in Japan for a year under the name Toyota Aqua, but only went on sale in the US in March.
It like is because it gets around 50 miles per gallon. (21.3 Kilometers/liter)

[peterb.livejournal.com]

Ahh. They're not sold here.

[fbhjr.livejournal.com]

Yet...

[evrgreen.livejournal.com]

A great story about your day - AND educational too!

Those plants are actually called "Bee Balm", and we have a few of them here - indeed, Bees do seem to like them.

It's funny that there seemed to be an attempt to force you all to become Hoosiers!

[fbhjr.livejournal.com]

Won't work. I'm Hoosing resistant!