Happy 4th of July! Lindsay and I decided to wake up early and get over to Churchill Downs Museum for the opening at 8am. The kids wanted no part of waking up early so we locked the door and left them asleep. We arrived and got set up for the 8:30 tour. That gave us some time to view the museum before heading out to the track. Lots of neat memorabilia from the 140+ years of Kentucky Derby’s that have been run. Our tour guide was great and he shared lots of info with us as we took the 40 minute tour. We learned about Triple Crown winners of years gone by, trainers, old cheating tricks and much more. The highlight was definitely walking out to the track’s edge under the famous twin spires! 
I have always wanted to go to the Derby and this was the second best thing. They train the horses from sunrise to around 9:30 to avoid the hot sun so we got to see them training about 30 horses that day. Wow is the word! The horses were muscular and huge and had ankles smaller than humans- these horses were built for speed. The training ground was divided into three sections- On the outside, the horses were taking a nice, easy warm-up jog, in the middle the horses were running at around 60% and on the inside rail, the jockeys had the horses running at nearly full speed. Those horses were flying by! We both hope to make it back there one day to be in the crowd of 170,000 plus on Derby Day. One thing that neither of us had thought of us was the fact that they kept horses their year round at the track. Churchill Downs has capacity for over 1,400 horses and we were told there were over a 1,000 on the grounds the day we were there. It was also interesting to learn that many of the jockys will race 8-10 races a day and often race over 500 times in a given year. Lindsay and I both hope to make it back one day to Kentucky on that first Saturday of May. I may even get her an oversized hat.
The Historic Twin Spires
We headed back to the camper and packed up quickly so we could get on the road. The days travels proved uneventful for the most part. We travelled west heading through St. Louis, Kansas City, and then into Kansas. Right at sunset we could see fireworks lighting up the Topeka skyline. We travelled until 10pm or so and called it a day at a rest area on I-70 about 50 miles west of Topeka, Kansas. Two rest areas in our first three nights- we can only go up from here!