Another Round of Horses Across the USA

While traveling home from BreyerFest and Tennessee, naturally I played my favorite car game, Horses Across the USA, to pass the time. The problem, though, was that since we travel the I-65 corridor through Kentucky and Tennessee fairly often, I saw the same horsey landmarks that I always see (for example, the Churchill Downs sign in Louisville.)

This time I wanted to see if I could find new horsey things as we traveled.

When I started clicking photos of this trailer, Craig was a bit puzzled. I explained to him that the initials PAM stood for Proud Arabian Mare to Breyer collectors.

This street sign honoring Man O' War was seen as we traveled through a new-to-us section of Lexington.

 As was this one.

I have always wondered why a cave was named this. 

Curious, I did a search and discovered this - there are some interesting ideas about the source of the name, that's for sure!

Horse Cave is a city in Hart County, Kentucky, United States. The population was 2,252 at the 2000 census.

The city is best known for the large natural cave opening located on the south side of Main Street, from which the town's name is derived. As for the historical reason for the odd name, various legends are told. One has it that Native Americans historically hid horses in the cave. A similar tale is that an early carriage may have lost its horse to an accident, when the horse fell into the cave opening. An even more far-fetched tale claims albino horses inhabited the cave and used a form of hoof morse code to communicate. Another, more likely, reason for the name is that the word horse was simply a 19th century adjective implying huge. The cave opening is large, and this is the most likely reason for the odd name. ("Hoss" is a Swedish word for "big in stature and big in spirit"; in the 19th Century, "Hoss", or "Horse", over time, became the Southern equivalent word, implying something that was huge or large.)

The cave itself has figured prominently in the history of the town. Around the World War I period, the world's only air-conditioned tennis courts were located in the entrance of the cave. Likewise, many of the early buildings alongside Main Street derived their air-conditioning from the cave. Inside the cave is a large, fast-flowing river, and the cave itself is also known as Hidden River Cave. This energy source provided the energy to drive a dynamo, and, for a while in the late 19th Century, Horse Cave was the only town outside of Louisville to have electric lights in Kentucky.

The point of the game is to find things that make me think of horses. This trailer made me think of saddles.

Jeff Toll,  a teacher (now a principal) that I worked with and who had Saddlebreds has always claimed that this is the best place to get boots. He goes to the Kentucky Derby annually and stops in at Boot Barn in southern Indiana every time.

 Another boot retailer in southern Indiana.

My favorite farm along the way near Columbus, Indiana. I can only imagine it at its heyday when the barns and pastures were busting with farmhands and livestock. Just look at that three story barn!

This last photo is not horsey at all.

This life sized statue of a Tyrannosaurus Rex is just north of Bowling Green, Kentucky and is my favorite landmark of all time. Our kids and their kids love it, too, and we often text each other when it comes into sight just to say we are looking at it yet again. I took this photo to send to our kids and included it in the blog post just because.

We arrived home Monday later afternoon and just had time to unpack, do the laundry, and get some sleep before hitting the road again. We had to be up early Tuesday morning so that I could go to Indianapolis and meet with a surgeon and his team. (We were there for six hours!)

I'll write more another time but I will be having pancreatic surgery in Indianapolis at the end of July. This BreyerFest/Tennessee trip was taken in part to take my mind off my medical woes. I'm not quite ready to talk about it, but I have a good surgical and medical team, so things are looking good.