Claiborne Farms – Paris, KY

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Claiborne Farm encompasses over 3,000 acres outside Paris, KY.

If you’re looking for the best tour of the Kentucky horse country, plan a visit to Claiborne Farms.

Located about 30 minutes from Lexington, Claiborne is a genuine working farm. Although tours must be reserved by appointment, they are offered every day of the week at 10:00 and 11:00 in the mornings.

The drive itself is worth it as you drive past large horse farms. The fencing alone costs inordinate amounts of money – some are wooden, but a surprising majority are old stone. This is old money out here and quintessential Kentucky blue grass. (more…)

24 Hours in Kentucky – Mammoth Cave National Park & Louisville

We started our Mother-Daughter trip by first going up to Louisville, KY. Since we were literally planning this trip two days beforehand, we had little time for extensive tourist research. I also have to say up front that I can’t find about half of the pictures we took.

We did notice Mammoth Cave National Park was on the way so we booked tickets for a guided cave tour. Again, I wanted to go there, but not actually go in a cave. Thing 2 convinced me otherwise. We bought our tickets online for the 1:00 Historic Cave Tour. The next morning we left Atlanta around 6 am so we’d get there about an hour before the tour began.

Mammoth Cave National Park

Gathering with the group outside the visitor center, the park rangers explained that parts of the tour could be claustrophobic. In actuality, it really wasn’t claustrophobic at all. They went into detail that there would be a few tight squeezes, but it was well-lit inside. Thing 2 and I stayed near the front of the 40 or so people. The other guide was trained to get people out of there if they had any problems. (more…)

Louisville, St. Louis & Memphis Itinerary

It was spring break and we had nowhere to go. At that time, my elementary school-age children were in two different schools with two different spring breaks. Thing 2 wanted to go somewhere for just a few days. We got out the Atlas. She wanted to go to Arkansas. I wanted to go to Missouri. We ended up doing a really fun trip to Mammoth Cave NP, Louisville, St. Louis and driving through northwestern Arkansas to Memphis – all in four days.

Thursday (more…)