Down South Y'all

This weekend we spent the Memorial Day Long Weekend down in Kentucky and Tennessee. We didn't stop once the whole weekend and we had an absolute blast! The Southern states are awesome and so is the food.

Friday afternoon we drove 7 hours and spent the night in Louisville, Kentucky. After checking in, we found Joe's Crab Shack - a restaurant by the river. The restaurant was nice and we had our first sampling of Southern food - a craw fish (like mini lobsters) stew with rice. It was nice, but spicy. We were enjoying our meal when all of a sudden the room went dark and a disco ball lit up the room. The entire staff jumped up on any vacant seat they could find and started doing the Macerina - that was an interesting sight to see!

We spent the rest of the night walking around the river front and down town Louisville.

There was a funny chicken park in Louisville

Sun setting on the river in Louisville

The next morning we went to the worlds most famous horse racing track - Churchill Downs where the Kentucky Derby is held. We were lucky enough to score a free tour through the grounds by a staff member! Apparently on Derby day the track fits in up to 150,000 people!

Us with a statue of the first ever Kentucky Derby winner and his horse


Churchill Down race track

We then went to the Louisville Slugger Museum. Here we got to see the world famous baseball bats in production and even got a mini slugger ourselves!

Show us your slugger! Ryan with his Louisville Slugger

Kristy in front of the 120 foot Louisville Slugger

Next up we followed the Bourbon Trail through central Kentucky, where 90% of the worlds bourbon is made. The trail takes you to bourbon companies such as Jim Beam, Wild Turkey, Makers Mark and some other ones. Since we were restricted for time, we went to Jim Beam followed by a smaller distillery called Heavens Hill.

At Jim Beam, we watched a video on how bourbon is made, saw the 9 story sheds the aged the bourbon in and got to tour the property that the Beams owned and lived on. Finally we got to sample one of their bourbons. Not our favourite drink.

Ryan with a statue of Booker Noe, Jim Beams grandson who now runs the distillery

This is one of the 9 story buildings the the bourbon is distilled in. There is black mould growing all over the building, which is just from the air, but it makes the buildings look super cool

A Reasonably Relaxing Weekend

Well, to some extent our weekend was some what relaxing, although we did manage to squeeze in a 4 hour return drive on Saturday and a 6 hour (return) drive in on Sunday.

Friday afternoon we had a few drinks at a bar with Ryan's boss and some of his work mates - not sure what the occasion was, just an excuse to have a few drinks! We sampled some traditional American appetisers - mushroom poppers and jalapeno & cheese poppers - all battered and deep fried, then dipped in ranch dressing!

After ducking home for dinner (and a quick skateboard around the estate), we headed over to Luis' (from Ryan's work) house for a few more drinks, before heading to a bar down town.

Saturday morning we hit the local golf course, with Tarun and Luis for 9 holes - wasn't that a sight to see! Considering Ryan has only played a handful of games in his lifetime, and Kristy has never ever played. We didn't even bother to keep score, although Ryan had a really good second round, getting the ball in the hole after 4 shots, and not all Kristy's hits were air swings - in fact the ball even went reasonable distances when she hit it!

In our golf buggy - we almost rolled it a couple of times!

Kristy with a hunk of grass dug up from her golf swing

Ryan lining up a shot

After golf, it was back to our place for a barbie. The BBQ we used had no hot plate though, only a grill like element, which made it really hard to cook on!

The 4 of us then drove 2hrs North to Buffalo for the afternoon, where Luis was to give us a guided tour. We started off with a coffee in an area like Beaumont Street, then had a look at the neo-Gothic post office building, a bank with a dome made out of 14,000 24 carat gold leafs, the building where the 'Buffalo Wing' originated, as well as a local bar! There were Buffalo Sabres (ice hockey) fans everywhere - the ice hockey grand final (in Buffalo) had just finished. Buffalo lost.

The bank with a 24 carat gold dome

Ryan, Tarun and Luis in Buffalo

The old neo-Gothic post office building

We then drove a bit further in town for dinner at a yummy Thai/Vietnamese restaurant.

Sunday morning we drove 3 hours East to Northern Central Pennsylvania (PA) to the PA Grand Canyon. We stopped for lunch in a quiet little gas lantern lit town not far from the canyon at an old school diner. We each ordered a roast chicken meal. What we got instead was chicken and mashed potato absolutely smothered in a white gravy sauce, with a side bowl of mixed veggies floating in butter! Sounds nice doest it?

The PA Grand Canyon is behind us. Ryan is becoming a master at taking our own photos!

Another shot of the Canyon

We then drove around the canyon - it was pretty, nothing like the Grand Canyon in Arizona though! This canyon was like a big valley with a river running through the middle, and is covered in trees.

The Windy City - Day 2

Today we walked down to Millennium Park.

The Wrigley Building - a really cool building in Chicago - check out the bridge joining the buildings near the top.

Here we saw the famous 'bean' - a massive silver bean shape object that reflects the Chicago buildings (and made you look like a dwarf when you looked in it!).

Kristy in front of the bean

The 2 of us waving at our reflection!

We then caught a train around 'The Loop' (down town). The train is elevated above the ground.

The elevated train

We got off at Sears Tower - the tallest building in the USA. We were a bit towered out, so we decided not to go up.

We continued walking down to the south side of town to Grant Park and had a look at Buckingham Fountain - one of the largest fountains in the world, before making our way to the aquarium.

In front of Buckingham Fountain

We watched some dolphin shows and got to see some cool animals like the beluga whales, sea otters, sea lions and of course dolphins, fish and sharks.

The dolphin show

Sea Lion

We grabbed some lunch and left. It took us a bit longer to get home due to heavy traffic through road works, and arrived home just before midnight.

The Windy City - Day 1

After a late night, we left for Chicago just before 5am Saturday morning. It took us just over 6.5 hours to get there. Kristy finally managed to have a sleep in the car (has been having difficulties doing so) and of course Ryan slept for nearly 2 hours of the trip!

The windy city wasn't really that windy.

First up we headed for Navy Pier - a touristy wharf with a Ferris Wheel, shops, restaurants and boat cruises. We strolled the wharf for a while, then jumped on the Ferris Wheel for a (really nice) birds-eye view of the city.

View from the Ferris Wheel

Kristy (on Ferris Wheel) with Chicago cityscape in the background

Chicago is famous for its awesome architecture, so next up we went for a walk through town admiring the buildings (there are so many tall ones that they block the sun, so it does tend to get a little chilly). In particular we looked at the Wrigley Building, Trump Towers (still in construction), Tribune Tower (which had bits of rock and building material embedded in it from places all over the world such as the Egyptian Pyramids, temples in Cambodia and the Taj Mahal) and the Water Tower (apparently this was the only building downtown to survive a massive fire back in 1871).

We then caught the bus uptown to Lincoln Park (wonder if that's where the band got its name from??) and to the Lincoln Park Zoo - which was free to get in to!!!! Bargain! We spent the afternoon here and we have so many cute photos, but cant put them all on (obviously), so here are a couple of our favourites:

Ryno with the Rhino - apparently there are only between 2000-3000 rhino's left in the world

Kristy with the lions

This is our favourite - the giraffe poking his tongue out!

After catching the bus back downtown, we went up the John Hancock Centre, a 1127ft tall building. We caught the elevator up to the 94Th floor for 360 degree views of the city.

We got to wash the windows of the Hancock Building

The view from the 94Th floor observation deck

By now we were starving, so we had some Italian for dinner, washed down with a litre of wine, and were passed out in bed by 830pm.

People Smuggler's!

Friday night we were invited out on Ryan's friend from GE's boat.

We left the dock at about 630pm and headed out around the bay, into Lake Erie to watch the sunset and have a few drinks. We didn't get much of a sunset due to the fog that was around.

Off in the distance we spotted a Coast Guard and a short time later they were pulling us up - it turns out that the nav lights were out, although it looked like they were on because the dashboard lights were on. The Coast Guard tied onto our boat and asked a million and one questions - checking boat licenses, insurance, life jackets, did we have any weapons, etc. We all then had to go sit inside the boat cabin (we felt like we were on a boat being smuggled! Especially considering half of us weren't from America) while they came on board and searched the boat. We then had to be guided back to the mooring by the Coast Guard.

The Coast Guard on its way to get us

Tarun, Ryan, Mark and Luis in front of the boat after being guided in by the Coast Guard

We then agreed to meet up with Tarun, Luis and Katherine at a bar for a couple more drinks, although Luis passed out at home and never made it. We didn't get home until just before midnight, and had to be up at 4.30am the next morning for our Chicago trip!

Back to Orlando

Monday was our last day in Florida. We got up early and checked out and drove to Orlando. Ryan didn't know what was on the agenda today until we arrived in Orlando. Kristy surprised him with a wake boarding session with pro rider Shaun O'Brien (Orlando is the wake board capital of the world) . The wind was bad which made the lake fairly choppy, but the water was warm 80F (25C).

Kristy didn't many shots of Ryan wake boarding - sorry this is the best one there is (by the way, that's Ryan upside down on the left hand side)

Next up was an Alligator park, just a few minutes down the road from where Ryan was wake boarding (apparently alligators are in every lake in Florida, you just see more in some. Ryan thought he saw a fish when he was wake boarding, but now he's not so sure it was a fish..!) The Alligator park had about 10,000 acres of water with over 30,000 alligators infesting it! We couldn't stay long, but we managed to see a couple swimming in the lake, and some that were in cages.

2 of the caged alligators


This alligator had just caught his lunch!

The last surprise of the day was Daytona race track. We only had about 15 minutes, so we went out to the track and had a quick look around.

Ryan - Daytona race track

Kristy track side

Before we left for the airport, we stopped at Daytona Beach for a look and a bite to eat.

Daytona Beach. If you look closely, you can see there are cable cars going over the beach

We had an awesome weekend, once again it was full on - we drove over 1200 miles the entire weekend!

The Keys

Sunday we drove nearly 4 hours to the Florida Keys, through to Key West. After a really crap on the road breakfast (from Denny's), we hit the road. The keys are really beautiful, although you the 'crocodile crossing' signs we saw made it very daunting to go swimming in the water! Our first stop was on the Islamorada Key, where we stopped to feed the Tarpon. Tarpon are a toothless fish, and the ones we saw were around about a metre long, some even bigger! We bought a bucket of fish to feed them and headed out the wharf.

Ryan fed some of our Tarpon food to the (brown) pelican.

Kristy was a bit of a sook when it came to feeding them, thinking they would eat her hand, but Ryan done much better. The fish leapt out of the water for the food.

Kristy attempting to feed the Tarpon

Ryan feeding the Tarpon fish

We then drove through to Key West. On the way we drove over a bridge that was 7 miles long (over 11km)!

The water at Key West is so blue! It was really nice.

After stopping at a bar for a quick drink, we walked the width of the key (about 2 miles wide), to a beach club for lunch.

We then walked the Southern most point in Continental USA, Earnest Hemingway's old house (a writer), the light house and browsed some shops.

At the Southernmost point in USA - we were closer to Cuba than Miami!

On the way home, we found a really nice stretch of water, so we pulled over for a quick dip to cool down.




By the time we reached the mainland, a massive storm hit - we have never seen so much lightening before in our lives (Florida apparently is famous for having heaps of lightening). The thunder shook our (piece of crap) car and the rain was so heavy we could barely see. We also only had $3 left in cash, and 4 x $1 tolls to go through to get home. We arrived at the last one and told the lady we had no money. She looked at us and said where are you going. We told her, and said we only had 47cents left. She said ok, and let us go through! It was so funny!