Day Trip to Louisville

Dianne and I drove down to Louisville early to look around before the evening roller derby bout. Our first stop was the Louisville Slugger Museum and Factory -- the spot where the Louisville Slugger baseball bats are made. I had a Louisville Slugger bat growing up as likely did a lot of folks reading this post.

I thought the factory tour was interesting. You followed the manufacturing process starting with a rough billet all following it all the way through finishing. They were manufacturing bats when we were visiting and many of the machines were being used. Unfortunately they didn't allow photography on the tour. :^(

The building also has a batting cage, small museum area, a gift shop, and various displays. The photo above and right shows Dianne near one of Adam Dunn's bats that is on display near the wall of signatures. She is holding our little bats we got on the tour of the manufacturing area. If you're in the neighborhood and have any interest in baseball it is worth a stop. It's an easy place to find. There is a HUGE bat outside the building. The bat is over 4 stories high! Here is a fisheye photo showing Dianne at the base of the bat. The fisheye lens exaggerates the size, but it is quite large. Click here to view a larger version of the photo.

After visiting the museum, we walked along Main street towards downtown. There is quite the mix of old buildings (some well kept and some not) and new buildings. There is also a mix of shops ranging from Army Surplus to upscale galleries and restaurants. It was very clean though -- which could be because there was very little pedestrian traffic to make any kind of a mess. The photo below shows some of the old buildings on Main.



We also walked toward the Ohio river and found a park overlook near the dock for the Belle of Louisville riverboat. The photo at right shows Dianne looking out toward the river with the Belle of Louisville docked below in the distance. Click on the photo to see a larger image. There was a large statue of William Clark (of Lewis and Clark fame) there. As usual, Dianne struck the same pose as Clark in the photo below.

After that we drove around the University of Louisville (a lot of angry cardinals in the pavement around the school) and also drove in to Churchill Downs. Overall it was a relaxing day in Louisville. See a few more photos from our visit in this Flickr set.