Kentucky Horse Park, Lexington, Kentucky - part 1

When I was doing the planning for our trip this year and knowing that we wanted to stop in Kentucky, I wanted to visit the Kentucky Horse Park. There is a state campground located on the grounds of the horse park, so we booked to stay 3 nights there.

On out first day, we decided to ride our bikes over to the Horse Park for our visit.

Entering via the Visitor Center

The tourist board's symbol (I guess for Kentucky, but certainly for Lexington) is a blue horse -- for "Blue Grass" and Horses.

Information about Dry Stone fencing

An example on the grounds

Going in to the Visitor Center

In the Visitor Center, we paid our entry fee and the nice lady there gave us a map with annotations about the times of the scheduled events written next to each of the buildings.

The first scheduled event was the Horse-Drawn Trolley ride -- when we got there, we weren't sure whether we would make it onto the trolley or not... but it turns out that they harness up two trolleys, and keep on running them until all guests have been accommodated. So, we made it on the second trolley...

A picture of the draft horses that pulled our trolley at the end of our ride -- the horse on the right is an "American Cream Draft". 

I had never heard of the American Cream Draft breed until we went to the Draft horse barn later in the day... more about that in part 2 of this posting.

The Mounted Police Barn was right next door to the "station" for the horse drawn trolley, and we had a few minutes before the next scheduled event, so we walked over to visit there...

There were mounted police with their mounts there -- we were encouraged to interact with the horses and with their handlers.

This mounted policeman said that he retired from active service (in Michigan, I think) and on the same day started work here at the Kentucky Horse Park.

In addition to providing the patrol support in the park, they also host a Mounted Police Colloquium once a year (https://kyhorsepark.com/event/national-mounted-police-colloquium/). That happened to be going on while we were there -- so mounted law enforcement officers were on the property attending classes, and on the last two days of the colloquium, participating in competitions / skill tests. On the website I posted above about the colloquium, near the bottom of the page, there is an interesting video about the program.

Tack room in the Mounted Police Barn

From the Mounted Police Barn, we walked up to the next scheduled event, at the Hall of Champions. In this barn are housed a number of horses that have been champions in various kinds of racing.

A couple of them were shown to us -- with videos about their racing performances...

Accelerate -- 2018 Breeders Cup Classic winner (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerate_(horse)) When Accelerate was being shown to us, we were asked not to clap or cheer until he had left the ring as he could be fractious.

Western Dreamer -- 1997 Winner of the US Pacing Triple Crown (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Dreamer). At 31 years old he is a little arthritic, but thoroughly enjoyed the attention and applause! After the scheduled event, his handler encouraged folks to come up and take pictures with Western Dreamer.

Outside the Hall of Champions there are markers for the graves of some racehorses -- I took pictures of a couple --  Go for Gin (1994 Kentucky Derby winner)...

... and John Henry (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_(horse))

John Henry was gelded both because of his temperament and because his breeding did not imply that he would be valuable as a stud. He went on to win the Eclipse Award in 1981 (unanimous election) and 1984.

After his retirement in 1985, John Henry was sent to the Hall of Champions at Kentucky Horse Park where he lived until 2007 when he was euthanized due to a kidney disease that was not responding to medication. He was buried here at the Horse Park just outside the paddock that he used. 

So many things to see and do... more in the next post!