My sole trip to the "South"

At the Horse Farm. Typical KY scenery - rolling green hills and cute wooden fences.
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I arrived at Ashland, KY early in the morning. I knew I had a wait on my hands as Maquel had to drop Genaea off at school and then it's quite a drive. (Maquel is a teacher who did some student-teaching in Christchurch when I was about 10. I stayed with her, her husband Deano and their daughter Genaea.) What I didn't know is that Ashland is pretty much Hicksville.

Case in point: someone asked me if I had come on the train from Ne Zealand. Second case in point: (muster the most stereotypical Southern accent you can imagine) another guy said "you look reeeal niiiice". At this point I really, really wished Ken was with me!! I told him to leave me alone and he did. So that was that. There were plenty of people around anyway.

Natural Bridge
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Anyway the few hours I was there was some of that mixed in with the friendly southern hospitality of folks just asking if I was alright and whether I had transport sorted etc.

Maquel met me and we started the drive to Lexington. It was really pretty, spring had well and truly sprung and there were blossoms of all different colours along the highway. When we arrived in Lexington we wandered around the cemetery, which is very old and large - filled with more of those great blossoms and trees starting to come back to life. We picked up Genaea and headed to their lovely country home for a BBQ dinner.

Next day we started out by touring a horse farm in Paris, KY. It was a very famous farm that has bred more Derby winners than any other. They even have a horse cemetery with headstones and everything. It was in a beautiful setting - much of Kentucky is rolling green hills, low wooden fences, and horses.

In ther afternoon Maquel and I had a short but steep walk up to Natural Bridge, a hueg limestone arch in the middle of the forest. It was lovely up there and I was glad we walked - the other option is a chairlift-type thing. Most lazy. On the way back down we encountered some great rock formations and som very slippery carved stone steps - another "does my insurance cover this?" moment.

That evening we went out to dinner at a Japanese restaurant with some of their friends and also with Cathy, Derek, Sean and Lauren who I was headed to Cleveland with (Cathy is another ex-student-teacher). The dinner was lovely and cooked in front of us with much flair.

Cathy and team came home with us for the night, and I had a genuine Kentucky bourbon.