Summer Vacation, Part Three: From the Kentucky Horse Park to King's Island x2

So, here's the final installment of the summer vacation updates...final for a couple of reasons, not the least of which is that our camera battery crapped out midway through our first day at Kings Island, so no more pictures were taken that day, or the second day we were there. Which, is actually for the best, because no one was picture-worthy that second day. The week's heat had taken a serious toll on all of our skin tones, attitudes, and appearances to where we all looked and acted like a haggard band of gypsies who've just had their butts kicked by the elements up one side of the desert and back down it again.

Anyhow, we start this final leg of the journey at the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington, KY. As you've already gathered, I'm sure, our boys (particularly Kian) have a slight obsession with animals, and especially horses. I thought it was little girls that got all bonkers over having a pony, but I'm finding that our boys are either very in-tune with their feminine sides, or that's a completely stereotypical myth. Anyway, the park is a great experience for kids who have obsessions like our boys have, and would enjoy spending a day seeing all different breeds of horses and learning more about the inner-workings of an operation centered around breeding and training racing and show horses.

Here we are with one half of the tandem "Thunder and Lightening." I forget which horse was brought out for the picture, but these Clydesdales were HUGE. I couldn't believe that a creature could get so big, it was amazing to me, and the boys were mesmerized by their hairy lower legs.

Silly faces as we await the start of the show horse riding exhibition.

The emcee of the riding exhibition, and then the boys getting a chance to pet and say hi to one of the exhibition horses.

Yes, that's right...ANOTHER pony ride.

This guy was training this horse just outside one of the stable barns we toured. He was working this horse hard, almost like he was trying to saddle break it. It was an interesting scene to watch unfold, for sure.

As we walked around the grounds, we saw this open pasture area in which a couple of horses were hanging out close to the fence. So, we walked over to try to get their attention, and actually spent a good 30 minutes talking to and petting these horses. The big brown male that you can see in the background of the top picture was really wily, and there seemed to be a bit of tension between he and the white female also pictured. The male would exert his presence whenever the female was shown attention, almost like some sort of bizarre abused spouse situation. It was neat though, and that male was also a really big horse that kinda made the boys skittish.

These were taken on a pair of giant chairs just randomly placed in the park. Jack was kind enough to snap the first photo, then I returned the gesture as he hung out on one solo.

The last series of pictures in this post were all taken at Kings Island. We had initially planned to visit the Cincinnati Zoo on the Friday of our vacation week. Then, Friday morning, we kinda decided to run an audible and let the boys make the call - we could either go to the zoo, as planned, or we could go to The Beach Waterpark. Of course, the boys chose the latter, so we purchased tickets online, via their website, and made our way to the water park. It had stormed the night before, which we thought was a bit of a blessing, in hopes that it'd break the heatwave that had badgered us the entire trip to this point. Unfortunately, the storm also caused enough damage to some parts of The Beach to make it so they had to close it for the day. Awesome - NO INDICATION of that whatsoever on their website. What was worse is that it wasn't like we could flip things up, go to Kings Island Friday then try The Beach again Saturday, because we'd already purchased our KI tickets as a special promotion, good only that Saturday. We again left the decision to the boys, and ended up shelling out an additional $180 to do Kings Island an extra day. Best yet, while we had every intention of returning to Cincy to use our Beach tickets, we never made it over there, and now they're useless since the season's ended. (Please visit SADTROMBONE.COM, and click the big PLAY! button at this point to appropriately punctuate the end of this sad sad tale...)

Well, we had a great vacation, and jam-packed just about everything we could into those 7 days. We ended up closing out Kings Island, as well, on Friday, then calling a fairly early end to the day Saturday when tempers, temperatures, and exhaustion had bested us all. Again, though, a truly epic vacation for the ages, and, as always, Jack and Kian prove to be 2 of the best behaved, most adventurous little kids on the planet!

(K)