For Horse Lovers Only

Kentucky Horse Park, Lexington, KY. My heaven, Ken’s “meh.” He was happy to drop me off to play while he got new tires for the truck—much needed after 51,000+ miles, at least half of them hauling our 18,000-pound fifth wheel around the U.S. three seasons a year. 

This was my second time to the park. It has grown a lot in 20 years. I could have stayed all day, there’s so much to see and do: three horse museums, two “Horses of the World” breed shows a day (each different), three “Hall of Champions” all-star presentations a day (all different), acres of cross-country grounds to walk, several barns to visit, statues of famous equines everywhere…and just the soul-quieting joy of being around contented horses and on beautiful grounds. 

I took the free ten-minute horse-drawn tour as an orientation and spent the rest of three hours going wherever I felt like next. The park is home to many retired champions from all aspects of the sport, most notably racing. There’s also a horse cemetery where, in traditional fashion, they bury only the horse’s head, heart, and feet; the rest they cremate and spread around the grounds. 

The day we arrived at the park’s nearby campground, they were just starting a four-day international jumping competition, which piqued even Ken’s interest. We watched quite a bit of the warm-ups and shows and wandered the cross country course imagining what it was like to hurtle 1,500 pounds of galloping horse toward unforgiving obstacles 4 feet high and 6 feet broad.

Two placid, handsome Belgians gave the day’s first tour of the park.

In addition to being a tourist attraction and a hub for worldwide competitions, the park is a working horse farm in all respects, with stables, farriers, veterinarians, and stable hands—many of them staff and others volunteer. There’s even onsite mounted police. Naturally, horses have right of way to cars, especially during shows when riders move among the arenas, temporary barns, warm-up rings, and cool-down areas.

Early 1900s watering tower, a remnant of the park’s time as a racing and breeding farm before it become a public attraction in 1978. The land has had many owners since the 1770s, most of them involved in raising and showing competition horses of some kind—Thoroughbreds, Saddlebreds, Standardbreds, Trotters. One owner built the watering system to ensure fresh water for the horses from a spring that never ran dry.

For its World of Horses shows, the park retains a large number of horse breeds ranging from the commonly known Quarterhorse and Saddlebred to the lesser known Paso Fino and Gypsy. Many live at the park while others rotate in from owners all around the country. The 20-minute breed shows therefore vary throughout the year. This show’s lineup had (left to right) an Ahkal-Teke, a Gypsy, an unusual champagne-colored Quarterhorse, an American Standardbred, and a miniature horse with his cart. The riders dress in clothing typical of the breed’s primary country and use.

The American Standardbred.

The Ahkal-Teke, a horse common to desert environments and known for its shimmering gold coat.

Several school groups were at the park, and the first-graders immediately found their favorite breed at the post-show meet-and-greet. They lavished little Starbuck with hugs and pets, and the mini just ate it up.

In the draft horse barn, one of the Friesians has just been prepped for his turn at the trolley ride. The park cycles the job among three or four draft-horse pairs. Below is a clip of his buddy getting groomed…with a vacuum. How often I wished for a Shop-Vac for Barney!

At the Hall of Champions gazebo, handlers parade the most famous of the park’s retirees in front of fans while an emcee tells the horse’s reputation and shows a film clip of him in action. It really is wonderful to see these magnificent animals up close. Some are still quite a handful to manage. This is Da Hoss, a famous comeback story of the 1998 Breeders’ Cup Mile, which he won after a two-year timeout recovering from multiple leg problems.

I love watching a horse enjoy a good roll. This fellow was in the field behind the audience at the Hall of Champions. As I waited for the show to start, he went down for a double roll (one each side), then got back to the important business of grazing.

 

Was this robin debating its options?

 

The park’s International Museum of the Horse does an excellent job exploring the centuries-old relationship between man and horse, up to contemporary times. The museum is even better than it was 20 years ago.

A quick lesson in equine evolution.

Life-size dioramas are frequent.

The museum offers something to suit everyone’s preference for horse breed, sport, purpose, or historical period. To absorb all of it would take days.

 

Outside the confines of the museum…seemingly endless riding opportunities.

One of the dozens of natural and man-made obstacles on the cross-country course. The horse must also clear the drop-off and creek directly behind it.

 

International competitors in one of the warm-up arenas. We heard a babel of languages around us.

 

Not looking quite so confident.

Clean-up crew.

 

Long-shot of the Rolex show arena in action: one intent competitor surrounded by others in their own workaday worlds.

Horses worth flying in from around the world.

This gal was the only one who looked like she was having a grand time.

No better place for a cool-down walk after a day clearing jumps.

The Falls, Not the Gap

Today I need some aimless, no-talking, nature time alone, so it’s off to Cumberland Falls State Resort Park, another project made possible by the backs of the CCC. (Given the economy, why don’t we reinstate something like that program, put our more aimless youth to work on state and local infrastructures, and send money to their families from their paychecks, like they did back then?)

Cumberland Falls is southwest of London, KY, and not (as I would have thought) affiliated with the Cumberland Gap park, which is to the southeast. This part of the Cumberland River is one of ten river sections still kept as “wild” in Kentucky. I take a couple of hikes, catch a few rainbows in the mists as clouds shift across the sun, and generally have a long-needed full-of-thought day about some concepts that have been niggling at me as I’ve traveled.

This park is particularly proud of its reputation for having a “moonbow”—a rare kind of spectrum that shows up in mist during a full moon (see pics at wikipedia.org, Moonbow). I’m here at the wrong time of the month to see it, and it’s just as well; the viewing spot is several miles in, accessible only by hiking. I suppose the trail is pretty well trodden by now, but after my starlit adventure at Arches, I wouldn’t be so eager to head out in the middle of a cold clear night just to see light playing on water droplets.

I lunch at the DuPont Lodge, a stone rebuild of a wooden CCC lodge that a fire took out in the 1940s. That’s the same DuPont we all know from the chemical/paint/agricultural industries. He stepped in with a large donation to get the state park built after the land passed from private hands into the ownership of a power utility.

Like so much of the U.S., this area was once prime forested living space for native peoples, and the idea of a husband and wife actually walking up to these falls in the late 1800s and saying, “This is great! We now claim all this area for ourselves,” and then later selling their homestead to someone else who allowed the rest of the public to partake by opening a bathhouse and hotel, completely baffles me, but that’s how this whole thing started.

I mean, whether it was a nation or a private party who said it, what gave anyone the initial right to claim, own, and sell a piece of ground that never, by its very nature as part of an exploding universe, came with a deed attached to it?

No wonder centuries of non-land-owning peoples have been wiped out and eons of nations have fought territorial and resource wars. Entrenched in the belief that there’s only enough land/resources for me and mine, not also for you and yours, this idea of “It’s mine!” “No, it’s mine and, by golly, I’ve got the paperwork to prove it in court!” has driven billions of people into thinking they have to pay someone else to live where they once could live for free.

But land on this planet belonged first to none but itself, and it will be here long after we silly possession-focused bipeds, with our artificial boundaries and man-made permits and heated legal battles over who owns what with what rights attached, are but memories of light in the stars.

And if the planet is really lucky, the grand tiny region of wild river called Cumberland Falls will still be around on that day—as long as the next highest bidder hasn’t obtained the deed and cleared it for tract housing or a golf resort.

The Cumberland River, still wild after all these years.

These rocks used to be open for beach parties.

Called Little Niagara, or Niagara of the South, the fall is about 68' high. The leading edge continuously erodes like a receding glacier.

Looking downriver from the falls.

An easy path into the woods.

Surprising find at the banks.

Wash-in.

Brittany was here.

Thundering texture.

Summer on the hillside.

So am I in the Cumberland woods or a Colombian forest?!

Sneak peak.

Shades of home--rhodies!

Upriver.

View from the hike to Eagle Falls, on the other side of the river.

DuPont Lodge.

A lunch with a view; birdfeeders outside the window were busy with goldfinches.