Today was re-planned many times. What ended up getting printed on the schedule was the world’s largest baseball bat (in Louisville) and spending some time in Indianapolis at the canal and children’s museum (which is supposed to be the largest in the country). In a fit of spontaneity (or maybe with a hidden agenda), DH decided to re-plan again. He routed us to see the Kentucky Horse Park and convinced the kids that seeking the world’s largest ark would be fun.
The Kentucky Horse Park had a lot of different horse federation headquarters on one sprawling property. DH thought that we could at least get a picture of a horse statute, since all of the museums and gift shops were closed. When we got there, the main parking lot was being used for welcome bag pick-up for a pony competition. The person directing traffic told us where we could go to see the kids warming up their ponies in the arena for the competition that would commence the following day. Although it felt like we were sneaking onto the property, the kids enjoyed getting to see that many ponies walking and trotting around an arena.
Next stop was the world’s largest wooden ark…fashioned exactly as one man believed Noah’s Ark would have been. When announcing his find, DH failed to mention the cost or what it really was. On the way, he started to have a conversation with the kids about how different people have different ideas and to not say ANYTHING when we were there, even if what we see seems funny or a little different.
After paying for parking, we went to the ticket booth at the bus terminal to buy tickets for the Ark.
I don’t know if it was because I was going to have a heart attack from the prices or because the museum was 45 miles away but DH purchased the Ark-only tickets rather than the combo.
Then, we hopped on a bus with a bunch of un-masked people (who were probably also unvaccinated) to go to a four story tall Ark that was packed with thousands of people. Yes, this trip was planned by the same person who made me spray groceries with rubbing alcohol for months before they got put away inside and didn’t want to fly on a plane to visit family on the East Coast because the kids might get COVID.
The bus dropped us off at a large building with a gift shop and presentation hall, where a speaker was talking about all of the animals on the Ark – including dinosaurs, because they are land animals. We didn’t stay there long because the 7-year old REALLY wanted to go inside the Ark. We had to first walk through gardens with huge tablets telling stories from Genesis and 7 was getting very impatient.
The Ark was massively huge.
The Ark had an entire floor of models of animal cages outfitted with clay hamster water feeders. As we continued through the floors, we learned more about the science behind the Ark (did you know that the animals would have been juveniles?) and the real history of the world, which included something about the door to the Ark being the door to Jesus’ redemption of the world.
I have never seen so many variations on “I love Jesus” shirts in one location than at the Ark.
Some people quite literally spend days visiting the Ark. But after about two hours of wandering around (and skipping a lot of the exhibits), the kids were done. Since we paid so much, even though I hate private zoos, we made a mandatory stop at the zoo outside of the Ark, which had live animals. Because it had been raining (a lot), many of the animals were not out. I don’t know why they didn’t go on the Ark… We decided to get back on the road instead of staying for the 40 days/40 nights gospel concerts.
DH really wanted to see the Indianapolis canal so we took a detour to go downtown for a photo op. Then on to the hotel. At least we got to see a nice sunset on the way.
