Slugger

We are at the Jeffersonville Elks Lodge, in Jeffersonville, Indiana (map), immediately across the Ohio from Louisville, Kentucky.

Yesterday we drove up the Dixie Highway, US-31W, from our digs in Elizabethtown. Almost the entire route is lined with big-box stores, fast food venues, barber shops, and, umm, bookstores and drinking establishments catering to the large military community. That would be Fort Knox, and 31W runs pretty much right through it. In fact, a soldier stationed at the fort was seated at our Teppanyaki table Tuesday night.

31W also runs right past the United States Bullion Depository, an impressive edifice surrounded by guard towers, barbed wire, and signs authorizing the use of deadly force. The place is even more impressive in person than in the photos or films, and I'm pretty sure that 31W comes as close as civilians can get. For me, it was impossible to drive by without thinking of the 1964 James Bond movie "Goldfinger," which featured the Depository prominently.

We had plans last night to dine at the Jefferson Club, on the 29th floor of the PNC Bank Tower in downtown Louisville, overlooking the river. We were briefly led astray by a map error that had us believing a Wal-Mart was within a couple of miles; once we got that cleared up, this lodge, across the river, turned out to be the closest place to stay. Not much further, though, there is also a Wal-Mart and a Bass Pro shop in neighboring Clarksville, and that was our backup plan in case the lodge did not work out for any reason.

This turns out to be a great spot; the lodge is quite active, with some 600 members and its own 18-hole golf course, large swimming pool, and restaurant. They offered us a 15-amp power outlet over by the cart shed, but we opted to be a bit further from the golf traffic on the other side of the lot. It's quiet here, but we are lit up like a stage fixture under Klieglights by an enormous HID floodlamp. From the road, though, we are just a silhouette.

As we rode the scooters into downtown for dinner, we found the revitalized waterfront quite remarkable, and the area just a block or two from the river now sports a modern convention center, performing arts center, and, naturally, the Louisville Slugger baseball venue, a modern ballpark in the currently fashionable retro style. The riverfront itself is mostly given to a vast modern city park, complete with transient docks, playgrounds, bicycle paths, and they are even in the process of converting an old rail bridge across the river into a walking/bike trail. The city does seem overrun, though, by painted fiberglass horses, an homage to nearby Churchill Downs, home of the Kentucky Derby.



We were so taken by it all that we decided to stay another night, again riding the scooters into Louisville this evening for a quick tour of the waterfront area, followed by a nice dinner at Vincenzo's Italian Restaurant downtown. That gave me most of the day today here in the parking lot to continue getting moved over to the new computer, a project which I must say I am now thoroughly tired of. I'm on the home stretch, though, and hope to post my report in the next couple of days.

We have no particular plan for where we go from here, or even when we will leave, but I am starting to think about getting the brakes done. They were down to 30% about 10,000 miles ago, and they're squealing now under light application (it clears up under normal stopping pressure). And, of course, we still have a weather eye out.

Photos by dannebrog and Ratzapuss, used under a Creative Commons license.