Dayton Daily News from Dayton, Ohio • 170

K4 DAYTON DAILY NEWS TRAVEL SUNDAY. APRIL 4. 2004 Horses Mom and "The Petunia saddle up for riding adventure t' 1 1m i. now TO GO Not to mln: Kentucky Derby Museum, 704 Central Gate Churchill Downs, Louisville. Experience Derby Day, ride a thoroughbred down the track, ogle historic racing silks (the matching colorful attire worn by the winning jockey and draped on the triumphant horse), listen to recorded tales from bona fide jockey legends.

Backside Track Tour, 7 a.m. through Nov. 30. Go to www.derbymuseum.org or call (502) 637-7097 for more information. Not to forget: Kaelln's Restaurant, "home of the first cheeseburger," 1801 Newburg Road, Louisville.

Order the burger, of course, but have somebody in your party order the special of the day, with choice of vegetables that can include scalloped apples, succotash, or okra and tomatoes. Drink the sweet tea. Eat the derby pie. Inexpensive. (502) 451-1801.

Not to skip, even on a diet: Try a famous Hot Brown at the Brown Hotel in Louisville. It's an open-faced turkey and bacon sandwich smothered in cheese sauce. Finish with the derby pie, which Is this vaguely pecan-ple-like substance that is more chocolate-chippy in the middle and less cloying. Very distinguished and dark paintings of famous horses will look on as you dine. No problem, because whatever you weigh, whatever weight you're gaining at this meal, remember this: Horses usually come In around 1,500 pounds.

More information: www.brownhotel.com. Not to dreif up for: Kentucky Horse Park, 4089 Iron Works Parkway, Lexington. It's 1,200 acres with 50 breeds of horses, and any number of changing calendar events daily. Open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

daily through Oct. 31. More information: www.imh.orgkhp or (800)678-8813. Not to worry: Many of the area's horse farms have tours; some require reservations, some charge a nominal fee. Look on the Internet or check with the Lexington Convention and Visitors Bureau, (859) 233-7299.

Click on It: Kentucky Department of Travel: www.kytourism.com; Kentucky State Parks: http:parks.ky.gov; Lexington Convention and Visitors Bureau: www.vlsitlex.com. I wait for a description of what I am to look at, then I suddenly realize, I am simply being instructed to look. To see. To see what she sees every time she sees a horse. I am already glad we came.

Horse Park It's Day Two. We are off for the Kentucky Horse Park, which is more a horse farm with a docent, a museum, a gift shop and competition arenas than it is theme park for the horse novice. It's the home of a few dozen breeds of horses, the burial place of Man o' War and his bevy of little War-ettes. There are also a farrier, who is actually shoeing horses the smell is akin to burning hair while you watch; a world-class museum exhibit about the role of the horse in the British Empire; two Coca-Cola machines; a horrible little cafeteria: copious amounts of dry dust; and hourly trail rides through pastures of impossible green. I am too mean about the cafeteria, but this is not Disneyland, and the pancakes don't come in the shapes of Morgans, pintos and Chincoteague ponies.

But the horses are real, the breed history is real and the heat is about to kill me. It's July. It is a measure of how much I love my daughter that I sit through two Parades of Breeds, two salutes to the flag, two too-long descriptions of the majesty of (insert your favorite breed here), and two after-parade petting sessions after enduring a trail ride on a horse that took my passen-gership as a sign to release a copious amount of gas. At the individual horse barns, we hang an inordinately long time with the prize Andalusian that seems to want to go home with us. Then we are headed inside to buy stuff when my daughter gasps to note that a tiny bird has fallen out of its nest on the ground precariously near the stampede of four people heading to War Admiral's final resting place.

The Petunia desperately urges me to "go find someone" and she stands over the little bird, blowing on it to keep it cool. I find someone. We save the bird from an untimely demise and go inside to the air conditioning to buy stuff, like a large horse-shaped rug for The Petunia's room, a horse banner for over her bed, a horse hat, a horse shirt, a horse purse, a horse ring and some plastic horses to play with. Sue me, it was her birthday and she was a hero to a lot of mama birds. All in all, my child is clearly taken with the horse world.

But it is all, up to now, horse pageantry. Tomorrow, when we schlep back to Louisville and go backside at Churchill Downs, she will see horses work. Up to now, she has seen thoroughbreds celebrated. Tomorrow, she will see why. She will see them run.

Derby Museum We are there at dawn, at the back gate, as instructed by a friend of a friend who is a trainer there. We stand in the fog as million-dollar horses glide by, going only CONTINUED FROM Kl we also threw in a slice of derby pie. We then spend the drive to Lexington "Horse Capital of the World" exclaiming over the brilliance of the Original Cheeseburger concept and discussing the finer points of sweet tea vs. plain tea in the Southern parlance. (We will be ordering sweet tea from here on in, as they get the sweetness exactly right every time.) We also linger over naming the new stuffed horse and settle on Lucky Kentucky.

The drive takes about an hour before the road begins to slip from wooded dale to a kind of pastoral Other Place, where the land is green and the planked fences are white and the horses sleek and eternal behind them. We almost stop in Frankfort for some world-famous handmade bourbon balls, but I worry about everybody getting a headache before we make Lexington and, instead, have a lengthy discussion about the merits of alcohol abstinence and the glory of eating unadulterated chocolate instead. Anyway, we're driving east on that first day and soon we get mightily distracted and take the side roads into Lexington, these little avenues radiating out from town, or toward it, like to Mecca. There, along any of many roads in, are horse farms. Scads and scads of them, bumped up against one another, separated by mare fences four-planked or stallion fences five-planked or limestone fences built 300 years earlier for this very same purpose.

OK, so this is a horse world my child would only know if she married really, really well, but it is a world that revolves around the world's most beautiful beasts. It's a world where the line of fences and the majestic thoroughbreds behind them look so much like paintings that you are surprised when the horses move or feed their young or break away, to race with nothing more than themselves, for no reward other than to remind themselves that they are the fastest things anywhere and you are not. The Petunia gets out of the which is not expressly forbidden but, be advised, this is not a tourist-equipped zone and these lanes are two-way and you need to have bought the insurance rider on your rental SUV. So, like I was saying, The Petunia gets out of the car, walks through the grass on the shoulder and stands next to the fence, transfixed. These are not animals in stalls or paddocks.

They do not look as if they are saddled much. They are as free as horses are likely to get these days, larger, in life, than the manor houses beyond them. We reach out to pet the fence lingerers and to touch, if they are willing, the shy foals. "Look, Mama." SY KRT the attractions at the Kentucky features expansive bluegrass breeds. ride.

Let the butt abuse begin. My daughter always gets the horse named Dusty. I get the one named Cimarron. One day, we ride for five hours, the four of us, with escort, stopping only for chicken sandwiches and chocolate chip cookies at a clearing. Cimarron and I make a deal about the tall purple clover.

(I will look for it and he will eat it.) We canter up trails and around the lake. We gallop in meadows of tall Queen Anne's lace. We sweat like someone is paying us. We save a goat who has gotten himself hopelessly caught in the feed bin. We meet a donkey named Clyde who spends the entire day about two inches from the stable fan.

We are treated exceptionally well by the resort workers who refer to us as "the California people" because no one has ever S'ttt vi- is- tit if i I ft YOUNGSTERS VISIT with one of Horse Park in Lexington. The park pastures full of horses of various as fast and as far at the jockeys "up" on them say. These are horses that make money instead of eat it. They are the kind that spend 23 hours a day in stalls, but have their own grooms and better nutrition than anyone who tends them. The Petunia is not as impressed as I want her to be.

This is one fabulous mother who's arranged this kind of a vacation opportunity. Where is the love? It's actually saved for a horse named Secretariat that she meets, sort of, at the really excellent Kentucky Derby Museum later in the morning. Here you can see every derby ever on film, at a click of a button. Here, you can watch on 360-degree screens what Derby Day is like. Here, you catch the fever.

Then we spend the afternoon in the grandstand betting on long shots. The Petunia is so not interested. I drink a strong mint julep and it gets no better. I turn to her, in the most celebrated horse place, under the twin spires of the vaunted Churchill Downs and say, honey, what is up? She says she would really, really, really like to ride a horse now. The next day, we head out to Plummers Landing, a spot where horses are not sport but labor, to Resorts, a resort in the absolutely most casual use of the term, and we ride for three days straight.

We stay in a bed and breakfast that houses only us, and it's across the dirt road from a muddy lake. Out front is a porch with five rocking chairs. Out back, a good thousand yards of wild flowers away, is a barn where tobacco used to hang to dry. We ride and ride and ride and 1-800-538-8141 937-767-2185 PlHNflK Your Alaska, Australia Hawaii expert Dalow Lamonl, Owner 247 Specials at www.4crulsing.com www.4cruiiingalitka.com flit. Online Reservations Air Hotel Car Cruise www.all-world.com TRAVEL SfcAVCt INC.

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She has shown me a place I would never have come without her. I have shown her that there is more to horses than one-hour She has shown me that there is more to know, and so much more to feel. On the plane home, I am working out the details of how to duplicate the derby pie. She is working on how to buy her own horse. I ask where we're going next year.

She seems to think we are going back to Kentucky. The deep muscle bruises should be healed by then. 4 rilf; come that far to walk in their fields and pet their goats and hog their horses. At night, there is nothing to do really but drive into town for a shaved ice at the Sizzler parking lot. We search frantically for books to read at the grocery store.

We buy Band-Aids in large quantities. We never figure out how to run the satellite TV at the isolated bed and breakfast. So we rent romantic comedies and examine our multiple aches, bruises and bumps inner thigh, inner ankle, inner knee, wrist cramp, mysterious elbow scrape, butt dislodgment that appear where saddles have rubbed or irons have clanged or horses have misjudged our (l n. i j.ifl -t TRAVEL AQENT-DIRECTORY Miami Vallevs Travel Specialists'-- A List of the i 3195 Daytoa Xenia Rd. Suite 800 Beaverereek, Ohio 45434 9-5 Sat by Appt 937-429-5383 travalnlen-davlon mm BEAVER TRAVEL SAT.

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