His boyhood home was about 20 minutes down the road,  Knob Creek Farm — 30 acres of property (just barely enough for subsistence living for the Lincoln family).  This was their field for growing crops and garden food.

 

 Today Knob Creek was a mere trickle, but during rainy season it’s prone to flash flooding. Legend has it that Abraham and a neighbor boy were jumping across Knob Creek one afternoon when a flood hit and Abe was nearly drowned.  The other boy Austin Gollaher, grabbed a branch on the creek bank and saved him with an outstretched stick.

This photo is at the actual location where the Lincolns drew water and where Abe played.

The cabin at Knob Creek was also a reproduction.  It was constructed from logs salvaged from the Gollaher cabin, and was almost exactly the same as the birthplace cabin inside the marble monument.

Next up was Louisville.  We had lunch at a fantastic little place called Roots that specializes in vegetarian Vietnamese food.  I was so excited by the menu I couldn’t decide what to order.  And as a huge bonus (to me, anyway) there were some gorgeous watercolor paintings for sale by a Vietnamese artist who lives here locally.  I bought my first treasure of the trip and stashed it in the small empty suitcase I brought specifically for treasure-lugging purposes.  Once it’s full, no more treasures — so I have to pace myself.

Louisville is probably most famous for it’s Louisville Slugger baseball bat factory.  You can tour the actual working factory, which was interesting to Adam because he “does” factories for a living.

This one was really spiffy.  The tour is so well done even the kids were excited about watching machines spit out baseball bats.  And, best of all, at the end of the tour they hand out free mini bats to everyone.  The minis are made out of regular-sized bats that don’t pass quality control.  The Slugger factory does everything they can to make sure the wood they use is kept at the exact right temperature and humidity to avoid warping and cracking, etc. but with a natural substance like wood, there simply are going to be pieces that don’t pass muster.  Each bat is hand inspected, and the Louisville Slugger brand is hand-burned into each bat.  In spite of the modern machinery in the plant, each bat still has a whole lot of work done by actual human hands.

I didn’t know that individual baseball players have bats custom designed just for them.  At the factory they have templates for every player they’ve designed bats for, and you can order “Derek Jeter’s bat” or “Babe Ruth’s bat.”  They had examples of some of the famous ones, including Pete “Louisville Slugger” Browning, (where the brand name came from) for visitors to hold and examine.  The older ones were surprisingly heavy.

The free mini bats have proven already to be both a blessing and a curse.  The kids absolutely love them … but they also are considered weapons by airport personnel, and for good reason.  (They warned us at the factory to put the bats in checked luggage because airport security will confiscate them if you try to carry them onto your flight.)  I suspect that by this time tomorrow, all three kids will have had their bats confiscated by me.

Last stop of the day was a little hole-in-the-wall place called “Homemade Ice Cream and Pie Kitchen.”  Holden and Josie got made-from-scratch mint chocolate chip ice cream, and Adam & I got Traditional “Derby” Kentucky pie, which is basically just regular pecan pie with an added layer of chocolate chips on the bottom.  Isabella chose chocolate cheesecake.

After eating all that dessert, we decided to retire to the hotel (which has a kitchen) and just eat salads for dinner.  The Kroger grocery store down the street has a great salad bar.  For the health of both our bodies and our wallets, we try to limit ourselves to only one meal in a restaurant each day.  That means dinner is generally salad or fruit and cheese from a local grocery store.