Places I’d Like To Go

I’ve been thinking quite a bit lately about places I’d like to go.  Some of them would be vacations, some day trips, and some are just places to eat.  Here’s a list of some of those places, in no particular order.

• Dollywood: This is the first time in several years that I haven’t bought a Dollywood pass.  My friends that I usually go to Dollywood with all decided not to get passes this year, and I don’t want to buy one unless I know I can make at least 2 trips to pay for it.

• Bonanza: The nearest Bonanza restaurant to where I live is close to an hour away, but we used to take regular trips there to eat.  It’s been too long since we’ve been.

• Myrtle Beach: My family used to take a vacation to Myrtle Beach every summer, but I haven’t been to the beach (Myrtle or any other) since the mid 90s.  I’m still sad that the Pavilion and the associated amusement park were torn down a couple of years ago.

• Cherokee, NC: This is a beautiful part of the country, and the scenery between here and there is awesome.  The area is rich in history, and it is a very interesting place to visit.  The Native Americans there allow you to play many fun games that they have prepared for you.  Sometimes they are so grateful that they even give you money.

• Cedar Point (Sandusky, OH) and Busch Gardens (Williamsburgh, VA): Of the amusement parks I’ve never visited, these are the top 2 on my list.

• Branson, Mo: Branson sounds like an interesting place to visit, and from what I’ve heard about it, it reminds me a lot of the Pigeon Forge / Gatlinburg area of Tennessee.  I’d be particularly interested in visiting Silver Dollar City, which is the sister park to Dollywood.

• Atlantic City, NJ: I’d love to go to Las Vegas, but I don’t like to fly, and it’s really too long of a drive.  I figure Atlantic City is the next closest thing to Vegas.

There you have it!  I don’t get to travel as much as I’d like, so I’m not sure if I’ll get to any of these places any time soon.  At least I can enjoy thinking about it!

Trip to Indy, Part 4 – The Trip Home

The day after the race, we packed up and left Indianapolis fairly early.

The highlight of our return trip was a visit to the Louisville Slugger factory in Louisville, Ky.  Almost all of the bats used in Major League Baseball are made there.  We took a tour of the factory and got to see the machines that make the bats in action.

The bats that they make for retail sale and for most minor league players are made on a set of 5 or 6 machines that carve a piece of wood into a bat based on a metal template.  It amazed me that these machines can make a bat in less than 60 seconds.  They still have to burn the logo into the bat and treat it with a lacquer finish after they come off of the machine, but the process of actually carving the bat takes less than a minute.

They have one single machine that makes the major league bats, and it is the only machine of its kind in the world.  There is a computer attached to this machine that contains the specifications for over 3,000 different bats, and the machine carves the bats based on the specs fed to it by the computer.  We saw some bats that they had just finished making for Ken Griffey, Jr.

As part of the tour, we got to see their collection of baseballs that had been signed by various Presidents of the United States.  They had baseballs signed by every President going back almost all the way to 1900.  There was an information card there that indicated Calvin Coolidge said “Baseball is our national game”.  I knew he had to say something or he’d never have gotten to be President.

We also were given a miniature replica bat as part of our tour.  At under $10, I’d definitely recommend the tour to any baseball fan.

There is also a museum there containing many historic bats.  Admission is free, so you can visit the museum even if you don’t take the factory tour.  There were bats there used by many of the most well-known baseball players of all time – Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, and even Honus Wagner, to name a few.

One of Babe Ruth’s bats that was on display had an interesting story connected to it.  Someone had found it in a garage where it had sat forgotten for many years.  When they examined it, they found that not only was it a Babe Ruth Louisville Slugger, but it actually had been personally autographed by Ruth.  They did some research and discovered that it was the bat with which Babe Ruth hit his last home run.  The bat is currently on loan to the museum, but it is worth so much that the owner plans to eventually sell it to finance their kids’ college education!

There is also a large gift shop at the factory, where I got my name engraved on a miniature bat.  No, I’m not a kid anymore, but I still thought that was cool.

Something that surprised me about Louisville Slugger is that the factory itself is pretty small, and they only have a total of around 200-300 employees.  For a factory that produces almost of the bats used in Major League Baseball, I guess I expected to find hundreds of machines and thousands of employees.

Our other major excursion in Louisville was to go across the Ohio river back into Indiana in order to visit the largest riverboat in the United States.  Of course, there’s a casino in it, which is why I wanted to visit it.  I’m not a big gambler, but I like to visit casinos occasionally if I’m in a place that has one.

Indiana is one of those states where only riverboat casinos are legal – you aren’t allowed to build a casino on dry land.  I have no idea why, but several states are like that.  It seems to me that casinos should either be legal or not – I don’t know why it matters if it’s on water.  The way this casino was built, it seemed obvious to me that it stays docked all the time, although I’ve heard the riverboat casinos are actually required to leave dock in some states.  The restaurants and hotel at the casino (The Horseshoe South Indiana) are all built on land, with a bridge crossing the road to the casino.  You actually can’t tell you’re on a boat at all when you’re in the casino.

The other highlight of our trip home was a meal at Steak ‘N’ Shake!  I had a portabello mushroom steakburger with a side of cheese fries and a cookie dough milkshake.  Great food!

After our meal, we drove the rest of the way home, and our trip came to its conclusion.  I must say it was one of the most enjoyable trips I’ve been on.

Trip to Indy, Part 3 – Indianapolis Motor Speedway

On Sunday, we attended the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard.  I’d been to the track many years earlier for a tour, but this was the first time I’d been to a race there.

We knew going in that we wouldn’t be able to see the entire track.  I’ve never understood why, but in addition to the usual grandstands around the outside of the track, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway has large grandstands inside the track infield behind pit road.  These stands block the view of everyone sitting along the front stretch, and I’ve never understood why they were built.  If they weren’t there, everyone would be able to see the whole track.  As it was, we could only see the front stretch and turn 1.  We watched all of the other action on a big screen TV.

One good thing about our seats is that we were right at the exit of pit road, and several of the top cars were pitting right in front of us.  Due to the frequent cautions, there was a lot of action in the pits.

This was a very unusual race due to tire problems.  The cars could only run 10 laps before the tires were completely worn out.  After 4 cars crashed in 3 seperate incidents early in the race, Nascar decided to throw a caution flag every 10 laps for the rest of the race so all of the drivers could come in a change tires.  I’ve never seen such a thing happen in all of the years I’ve been watching Nascar.  I suppose they were afraid some of the drivers would try to stay out too long and there would be more crashes.

While I would have preferred to see a more traditional Indianapolis Motor Speedway race with some long stretches of green flag racing, I still enjoyed the race.  The racing was actually very good while they were under green.  The cautions kept the field bunched up, so it was exciting.  Jimmie Johnson was the winner.

After the race, we had supper at Carraba’s Italian Restuarant.  While there is one not too far from where I live, I hadn’t tried it before.  I can’t begin to remember the name of the dish I had, but it was lightly breaded scallops with a sauce that reminded me of a stone-ground mustard.  As a side item I had some sort of pasta with a spicy marinara sauce, as well as a house salad with creamy parmesan dressing.  I pretended there was no possibility of the dressing containing any mayonnaise.

After that, we just hung out at the hotel and took it easy until time for bed.

Trip to Indy, Part 2 – The Dark Knight and O’Reilly Raceway Park

After driving to Indianapolis on Saturday morning, we found an IMAX theater so we could watch The Dark Knight.  It was an outstanding movie.  Heath Ledger did an amazing job as The Joker.

We then briefly stopped by our hotel (The Jameson Inn) to check in.  It was both nicer and more expensive than Motel 6.

We then headed out for O’Reilly Raceway Park (formerly Indianapolis Raceway Park).  It’s a 3/5 mile short track a few miles outside of Indy.  It was out in the middle of a bunch of cornfields with nothing else nearby.  I’ve been watching races at this track on TV for years, and it surprised me how “old school” it was.  The main grandstand was very small, and the rest of the stands were portable bleachers.  The section of the stands that we were in didn’t even have access to a permanent restroom – only Port-a-Johns.

We decided to pay $11 extra to sit in the “all-you-can-eat” section of the stands.  Given the normal price of racetrack food these days, it costs almost that much for a burger, chips, and drink at most tracks.  So, we thought this sounded like a good deal.  The all-you-can-eat tent was seperate from the main concession stands.  The advantage to this was that there was no line to wait in.  The disadvantage is that the food and drink selections were severely limited compared to regular concession stands, which we didn’t expect.  Still, I had 2 cheeseburgers, 2 hotdogs, a bag of hot fries, a bottle of water, and 6 cokes, so I got my money’s worth.  They were also encouraging people to take as much as they wanted after the race because they had a lot of leftovers, so we wound up with another backback full of cokes, and I had another cheeseburger.

The race was very good, even though Kyle Busch led 197 of 200 laps.  Guess who led 2 of the other 3 laps – Morgan Shepherd!  Yes, that’s all I have to say about the race.  Leave it to me to write more about the food than the race.

The coolest part of the night was what happened after the race.  As we were walking out of the spectator gate, we noticed some crewmen pushing a wrecked race car past us.  I looked to my left and saw a truck with the car’s sponsor on it, so I assumed they were pushing the car to their souvenir stand to display it.  We then realized it wasn’t a souvenir trailer – it was their car hauler!  We then realized all of the car haulers were lined up right beside us.

It isn’t uncommon for the car haulers to be left outside the track at the smaller tracks, but they are usually inside a fenced-in area.  This is the first time I’ve ever seen the car haulers parked in the same parking lot where the fans park, and just a few yards away from the first row of parked cars.  So, we got to watch them load the cars as if we had a pit pass.  One crewman came by trying to push David Reuitimann’s car by himself, and he yelled for a group of fans to help him push it.  My friend Chris wound up helping them load the car into the trailer!

After that, we headed back to the hotel to rest up for Allstate 400 at the Brickyard!

Trip to Indy, Part 1 – Getting There

Last Friday, I left on a trip to Indianapolis with my friends Chris and David.  We decided to spend the night in Lexington in order to split up the drive getting there, especially since we weren’t able to leave until Friday evening.

We had a Garmin GPS system in the van with us, which turned our vehicle into something akin to a female version of KITT.  The Garmin worked very well, except that she was very insistent if we decided we’d rather take a different route than the one she recommended.  After we got to the Virgina line after passing through Lynn Garden, she tried for 17.4 miles to get us to do a U-turn and go the way she wanted us to.  She finally gave up and recalculated our route.

When we got to Pineville, Kentucky, Chris told us an interesting story.  He pointed out an outcropping of rock high up on the mountainside above Pineville, saying it was a large boulder.  He also said that what looked like a tiny rope from that distance was actually a giant chain with 6-foot long links.  The story goes that when the town of Pineville was being built around 100 years ago, the residents became concerned that the boulder would fall off the mountain and crush the town.  So, they tied the chain to it to ease their minds.

After a stop in Middlesboro for supper at Arby’s, we drove on to the Motel 6 in Lexington, where we had reservations.  At the price we paid, it was a nice place.  The furnishings in the room were minimal – beds, a table, and a chair, as well as fewer light fixtures than in most hotels – but it was clean and well-kept, which is the most important thing.  There was some kind of store across the street called “Hustler Hollywood”.  I don’t know what that is.  They must sell pool tables or something.

The next morning, we were off to Indy!