Monday, September 21, 2009

Home from Louisville

John and I have returned from a "working" trip to Louisville, Kentucky. We had a good week of work setting cosmetics in an Ulta store.
The drive to Louisville, although about 11 hours, is really a very pretty drive and is divided easily into 3 fairly equal parts--home to KC, KC to St. Louis, St. Louis to Louisville. As you can see, we drove right past the St. Louis arch.It's interesting, too, that each of these three major cities sits on a major river--the Missouri, the Mississippi, and the Ohio. But, we know that many of the early settlements were on rivers because rivers were major sources of transportation for both people and goods before we had railroads, highways, and semi-trucks.
Here's a view of the Louisville skyline. I'm thinking about posting some skyline pictures to see how many you can identify.

One evening I was able to take the car and do some sightseeing on my own. John was exhausted from work and doesn't really care for historical sights anyway. So, I found two places not far from our hotel that I could find without having to drive on the interstate system!
This is a picture of the home of George Rogers Clark. He was the brother of William Clark of Lewis & Clark fame and supposedly the founder of Louisville. His home is on a beautiful piece of land called Locust Grove in a beautiful neighborhood of Louisville. I wasn't able to go in the house because it was closed for the day but enjoyed walking around the estate.

Not far from Locust Grove is the Zachary Taylor National Cemetery. Taylor was the 12th president of the U.S., but died just over a year into his presidency. His father, Richard Taylor, had served as an officer in General George Washington's army during the American Revolution and received 6,000 acres of land in Kentucky for his service. So, although Zachary was born in Virginia, his family moved to Kentucky soon after his birth.
This picture is of the grave of President Taylor and his wife. The stone object in the background is the original grave and the mausoleum structure is the current burial place. Several members of their family are buried in a plot to the left of the picture, but then the rest of the land is a national cemetery.
If you have never been to a national cemetery, you should try to visit one sometime. It is interesting to see the uniformity of the gravestones and to walk among the graves and see which war the soldiers served in. Most importantly, it gives you a tiny glimpse of the numbers of valiant men and women who have served our country. I'm curious to know when this particular piece of land first became a national cemetery because the oldest grave I noticed was from the Spanish American War. But, I didn't walk throughout all the graves.
The next night John took me on a date for the highlight of our week! We attended the National Quartet Convention at the Louisville Exposition Center. The auditorium holds 20,000+ people and it was nearly full. This picture is not the best, but I thought the colored spotlights made quite a sight. The stage is the white segment.The music was excellent. It started at 6 pm and we left at 10 pm although the music continued until 11 pm. That was 4 hours of solid music from quartets and other small groups. Even while they were setting up for the next group, they played black and white films of old groups singing. Each group peformed for 17 minutes and the convention was Sunday night through Saturday night with concerts every afternoon and every evening. That's a LOT of quartet singing!
All the groups were very entertaining, but the most exciting for us was seeing the Bill Gaither Vocal Band. This next picture shows how they announced each band with their name in lights around the auditorium.
Thanks for putting up with my travelogue with a little history thrown in!
Have a great day!

4 comments:

Stephanie Brandt said...

Glad you had a great trip!

Michelle Traudt said...

Sounds like a good time!

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