GatewayRedbirds.com

As an aside - the Aloft Hotels (now part of Marriott system) are kind of fun -but may be a little weird* for two buddies. But they have a good pool table and bar- and TV area if you want to catch football
games.

*weird in that the bathroom is kind of open, behind partition type walls. You hear your roommate's business.

Thanks, guys. The Slugger plant was the only thing on my agenda along with a bourbon tour. I forgot Ali is from there so I will definitely check out his museum. Probably look to play a round or two of golf if it is still warm enough.

stlouie_lipp wrote:Thanks, guys. The Slugger plant was the only thing on my agenda along with a bourbon tour. I forgot Ali is from there so I will definitely check out his museum. Probably look to play a round or two of golf if it is still warm enough.

I am not a golfer, but they have one in classic old Iroquois Park.
The concert we went to was in the Iroquois ampitheater. It was pouring rain that day so we didnt get to look around the park much

Freed Roger wrote:

stlouie_lipp wrote:Thanks, guys. The Slugger plant was the only thing on my agenda along with a bourbon tour. I forgot Ali is from there so I will definitely check out his museum. Probably look to play a round or two of golf if it is still warm enough.

I am not a golfer, but they have one in classic old Iroquois Park.
The concert we went to was in the Iroquois ampitheater. It was pouring rain that day so we didnt get to look around the park much

There's also one in Cherokee Park. Both Cherokee and Iroquois are Olmsted parks, with their own characters, and they are the largest in the city. Cherokee is to the east, and Iroquois to the south. And Crescent Hill is pretty close to downtown, too.

https://louisvilleky.gov/government/parks/golf-courses

CardsofSTL wrote:You can also go to Flying Axes and drink alcohol and then throw axes at wood targets. I've done it. It gets harder the drunker you are for some reason.

I can't even imagine how difficult it can be throwing axes while drunk. I did that sober at the place in Valley Park (you bring your own cooler of beer) and it was tough enough without drinking heavily. Definitely fun though. We ended up trying out all of the other stuff they had to throw and the other things like knives, metal 'playing cards' and smaller hatchet type things were a LOT easier to throw. Always a great time!

I need to move, all the axe throwing places in Chicago forbid the consumption of alcohol on premises and there's not much point in being in an axe throwing place sober.

We are going down there next weekend, and I'm having the same challenge I have every time I go: lodging.

The options along the bourbon trail (not in Louisville or Lexington) are:
1. laughably outdated b and be where Colonel Jackson slept in 1860-something and Colonel Washington was the mayor of the town and owned the house from 1886 until he died of typhoid at age 34 and it's patterned wallpaper and fourposter beds and hutches displaying commemorative plates all over the dining room.
2. discount chain hotels--Best Western, Holiday Inn Express, etc.
3. airbnb a dump. Stuff like this white box of depression with a bed on a frame and no headbord and not a single piece of decoration on a wall. For $85/night.

The options in Louisville are:
1. 21c Hotel at $300/night
2. Fairly nice hotel or a classic (Brown/Seelbach) at $150-200/night that will tack on $30/night to park
3. Discount chain hotels.
4. airbnbs in new construction that are bland unoccupied Developers Special condos
5. airbnb a dump
6. airbnb one of the like five decent places way out by the racetrack or something
7. airbnb one of the five desirable airbnbs in NuLu/along Bardstown Road

What's really weird about this is the boom in tourism to the trail and that we are several years into it, with basically no reaction by the Kentucky tourism industry. They hit 1 million visitors in 2015 for the first time and then were already at 1.5 million in 2018. Buffalo Trace (not an official member of the Kentucky Bourbon Trail) got another quarter million, with some overlap of course. And no one has been like "I'm going to build a nice little hotel, like 20 rooms, with a nice restaurant, that is geared toward everyone from Chicago, California, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Austin, Miami, Charlotte, New York, and so on who are coming down here and are accustomed to something a little more contemporary." I was talking to Dave Scheurich about this earlier in the year, he was saying the nature of those small towns is that they just don't have the manpower to staff them. The existing motels, b and bs, cafes, etc., there's not enough people in town to work at them for all the tourists. It strikes me as an odd thing where you have an industry with overwhelming demand and the market refuses to supply. So people like me--under 50, travel for food & beverage, like contemporary/mid-century modern, disposable income to travel--just suck it up and stay at the 21c or the Aloft or for some charm The Brown, when I'd totally go spend money to stay in Frankfort or Bardstown when down there for work, and give them tax revenue and money for business owners and their staff but there's just no option.

We, the newly fam of 4, drove up to northeast west virginia from arkansas for a wedding. On the way there stayed in louisville with fam. But, on the way back we left the wedding reception saturday night and came directly home...which is a long way. My wife made it to like the kentucky line and then I took over. Got past lexington and it was a freaking ghost town. Tried to make it to whatever that highway is that runs south from louisville to nashville. But, after not seeing anyone for like 30 minutes and falling asleep, I cracked a beer. And, then a second one. All I wanted was a place to stop, but there were literally none. Finaly made it to Bardstown, iirc, and even that place was a ghost town. ended up stopping somewhere and picking fleas off us all night. slept from maybe 3-7 and left. Complete [expletive]. But, there was nothing else around. Dearth of options in that area.

How big of a dump is the Horseshoe Southern Indiana? My friend likes to gamble and wondered about staying there. The night of the concert we will stay downtown, but the other two nights I don't really care. We need separate rooms and they are $60 each so it's a good bargain, but it makes me think the place is a dive.

Never been to the Horseshoe Southern Indiana, unfortunately, so I really couldn't say.