We started the day by going to the Falls of Ohio State Park. You might be sort of confused, because I will be the first to admit I was. First off, the park is located in Clarksville, Indiana (where our hotel was located) NOT Ohio State. Then, you might imagine that we actually saw "falls"...like waterfalls....right?? Nope! Here is an aerial view of the park:
Confusing right?? Apparently, by "falls" they meant that before that dam was built (along the top of the picture) the water rushed through this area sort of like a waterfall? I don't know, you've got me. When we were there on Saturday the water was far more receded and you could walk pretty far out on that limestone. Embedded in the rock floor there are fossils (if you knew what to look for). In any case, it was an excuse to get out and walk around for awhile instead of sitting in the hotel. I managed to forget my camera in the car so maybe if Ellyn sends me a few pictures from this part of our day I can updated it later. In short, I'm not sure that I would go back, but, for the $2 we paid to visit the park it wasn't a bad activity at all.
After the Falls we went to a Louisville MUST! I've give you one picture and see if you can guess where we found ourselves Saturday afternoon.
Did you guess it? That's right, we hit up the Louisville Slugger Factory located right in the heart of downtown Louisville. We took a tour of the inside of the factory and learned all about how they make bats. Ryan and Dan were pretty impressed with the factory and we all thought it smelled just like our garage and Gazebo Junction (where Dan used to work).
Did you know they make over 1.8 million bats per year at this little factory? And, that they build all of the bats for the major leagues? We learned that each major league player gets around 100 bats personalized (make/color/measurements/engraving etc) EACH YEAR? That just seems crazy!!
Inside the factory we saw big shelving unit with some of the biggest names in baseball....each player had a cubbie hole of sorts with his personalized bats inside in all stages of the process. Some where in the very first stages (still in long cylinders of wood called billets ) and some were almost ready to go out. It was pretty dang cool to imagine that someday soon some of the most famous men in baseball would be holding those bats. We even saw the bats for Magglio Ordonez and Paulie Konerko (I promise you I have no idea who those guys are...but Ryan said it was a big deal).
Hehehe...I know this is a family site, but I just couldn't resist this one. It was a wax sculpture and I couldn't believe how real the skin on his face felt. Anyways.....at least Ryan was able to take a nice mature picture :O)
All in all it was a great day! We even got some cute little mini-bats that came in VERY handy for those cute little signs Ellyn made for race day.
Love the pose Sadie!
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