Our planned trip to Louisville started off a bit rocky.....not only was I running behind on packing and leaving, since I only had one day home in between getting home from my Boston work trip and us leaving for Louisville. We were trying to leave by noon to drive to our overnight point outside of Cincinnati at a horse hotel. This was to take advantage of our toddler's nap time, which is usually between noon and 2 PM. We assumed the 5 hour drive would go smoother if our daughter was able to sleep for a large chunk of the drive, well...... noon came and went and I was not ready, and our toddler was melting down, so we decided to put her down for a nap and we would arrive later than anticipated to our destination, by 1:15 PM we were ready to leave and she had not fallen asleep yet, so we loaded her up and the last of our things and goats and headed towards Cincinati. The drive was interesting, our daughter only slept for about 45 minutes once we go to the Akron -ish area, so we played and entertained her until we had to stop slightly passed Columbus for dinner at a Cracker Barrel, thankfully, the parking lot was large, shady and had a ravine area Avery and I could explore to burn off some of the toddler energy that was pent up in the car seat.
We got back on the road after another stop for diesel and soon after we saw a truck pulling a box trailer that had a broken axel in the back, after alerting the driver we continued to our destination, which thanks for google maps dropped us off in a cul de sac of a neighborhood, after calling the owner of the property and a helpful neighbor, we were able to get turned around and re-routed where we needed to go. The barn manager met us at the end of the driveway and showed us to our parking spot for the night, the problem came when we got near the barn, it was a circular driveway, sadly even though I asked if the driveway was capable of turning a 38 ft trailer around in it, the owner had not considered the turning radius... so after a long day of packing and driving my poor husband had to back up and maneuver our trailer about 20 times in order to be able to make the swing in the driveway without bottoming out the trailer.......... After about a half hour of challenge we were able to make our way onto our spot, get the trailer plugged in and the girls off loaded into the stall.
It was a beautiful facility with fans and a spacious stall for all of the goats, and a very capable electric supply for our trailer. Once we were settled everyone on the horse property wanted to come see the goats! We had a lot of visitors! We were able to get Avery settled into her pack and play while Rob and I strategized on how we would get out of the driveway in the morning. Thankfully, as we pulled out at 6AM the following morning to make the remaining 2-hour drive to Louisville we were able to swing wide into the grass and exit with much more ease than we entered the property!
We arrived in Louisville by 9 AM on check in day, trying to do multiple things (beat the heat) that did not work, get the goats off of the trailer before the heat of the day (that did work!) and get a camping space before our daughter's nap time at noon. We were able to get through Vet check after about an hour of waiting, which was very smooth, and get mostly unloaded before heading over to find camping. The attendant for the parking lot where camping was turned out to be very slow moving, but after about 12:30 we got in a spot and settled enough that we could lay our daughter down..... I will tell you camping and doing all of the moving we do with a toddler is not for the faint of heart.......
Rob stayed at the camper, while I loaded the truck up to head back over to the complex with our items to set up our pens and display, so after about 2 hours our stalls, and camper were set to a point where we could work with them, so I went to check in and find Rob's commercial booth spot. Once Avery woke, we switched and got his Gray Goat BBQ booth set up for the week and finished the day by ordering pizza, because by that time we were absolutely exhausted!
Check back next week to hear how our national's week went! I hope you all are keeping cool in this hot weather, take care and happy goating!
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