Our Happy Places

It was kind of a nasty day weather-wise. We had some dry spells, but we also had some real downpours of rain while we were out and about yesterday. We're hoping for better weather today. We have a plan to take a walk in historic downtown Bowling Green. We'll see how the morning plays out. The forecast isn't looking promising. In any case, we're having lunch at a nearby brewery in hopes of scoring another beer t-shirt for Erik.

Getting back to yesterday, our day started at the National Corvette Museum. That was on Mike's bucket list, although he's been to the museum once before. We sure saw a lot of shiny cars there!

We passed by some pretty flower beds on our way through the parking lot.

The first thing you notice coming through the door is a series of beautiful new Corvettes all lined up. These are cars that are being picked up by new owners. It is possible to pick up a new Corvette at the museum if one plans it that way at the time of purchase. When Mike’s mom passed away, she left him a little bit of money. Most was saved, but the one thing he spent money on was our C-5 Corvette. It’s a 2000, "Millennium Yellow" in color. We seriously considered ordering one from the museum at the time, but then a local dealer had exactly what he wanted. And you know...instant gratification. Seeing these was the next best thing.

I removed the new owner’s name below the word “Congratulations,” but this is what would greet you if this were your new car. I love that color, “Riptide Blue.”

I’m not much of a car buff, and so I’ll post these in the order I took them. The sign describes the car that follows. This was one of the first Corvettes ever built.

This is the cockpit. It's not the same car, but it makes me think of Thelma and Louise.

Mike said these little “village” scenes were new from when he visited the museum back in 2017.

These were all Corvette race cars.

Walking on...

This was another of the first Corvettes.

My kids were never into building model cars, but Erik had a pretty extensive matchbox car collection. 

The Millionth Corvette…imagine that.

It was parked kind of back in a nook. It seemed like it should have had a more honorable spot to live, but no one consulted me. (Have you noticed how often bad decisions are made for the lack of consulting me first? It's a shame, really.)

This part of the museum was pretty interesting. You might have read about it when a huge sink hole opened up in the museum and swallowed up a bunch of Corvettes.

Here’s what happened.

This is a still image I took from a video that was playing.

I was able to find some video footage from the History Channel showing the sinkhole and efforts to retrieve the cars. If you can't see the video, then click right here.

The exhibit below is a model of the sinkhole and where the doomed Corvettes ended up. The cloudy representations in the lower blue portion are all cars.

It’s all been cleaned up now, cars removed, and the hole filled in. The only indication anything ever happened is this door in the floor. You can look through the glass to see how deep it was.

This was one of my favorite rides at Disneyland before I was an actual licensed driver.

You can see the small Autopia car on the left in the image below. I included the car on the right for scale.

Mike told me this next car was one of the first cars built. It had a “straight-line six cylinder” engine, and it didn’t go very fast. The car didn’t sell well.

This is the first Corvette hybrid.

Very sleek in its design.

Okay, now that we’ve discovered Duncan Hines was an actual person, did you ever hear of Louis Chevrolet? That’s another name of someone I thought was just a brand name. Turns out, he was a real guy.

Here’s his bronze bust.

And check out this old classic. Anyone driving this car in the 1930’s had to be well-off financially.

Here's the cockpit. With our modern digital dash panels, it seems funny to see so many mechanical gauges.

My brother had one of these cars. His was a beater, but the ones that have been maintained are classics.

So that was pretty much what we came to see at the museum. Need to use the ladies room? The men's room is off to the right.

Check out the tile work in the restroom. 

Of course we stopped off at the museum store before we left where I scored a shot glass and a refrigerator magnet.

Okay, and then we were off to find my happy place in the form of Kentucky Quilt Co. The traffic was absolutely awful getting there. As the bird flies, it was only about a mile from where we're staying. Traffic wise...oh my...it was gridlock. When we arrived, I despaired thinking it was mainly going to be a place that sold sewing machines and vacuums.

Then, I spied the name of the quilt shop there on the left.

And it was a store that mainly specialized in sewing machines and vacuums.

But turning around from where I was standing, it also included a small quilt shop through that door.

Just as I passed through I found a lot of kits, patterns, and fat quarters.

My eyes went directly to this Bzzzzzz Mini Quilt kit. Well, I rarely buy kits, but I really liked this pattern. I’m a bee lover from way back.

Through the door, I found the small quilt made up. And see that tag at the top? “Pattern Available.”

So I asked about it, and sure enough. And that baby is so coming back to Oregon with me. It's paper-piecing, but I imagine I can survive the assault if I only do one block at a time.

There wasn’t much about the designer on the front of the pattern, so I included the printing from the back.

It was a small space. They had some pretty fabrics. I especially like the dots and stripes on the right side of the image below.

They had a lot of brights and prettys to choose from.

These positioned on the front side of the store were all on sale, and for good prices. I didn’t see anything I could use right away, and so I passed them by.

Fabric extended all the way down the side wall and turned the corner at the far end.

There were some more fabrics in short shelving units in the middle of the store.

More along the interior wall.

They had some pretty bee fabrics here. They were tempting, but I decided to hold off. I have some bee fabrics at home.

I ended up choosing a fat quarter of this fabric for my regional print. With the Kentucky Derby this Sunday, how could I choose anything else?

Mike and I are not into horse-racing (or dressing up in fancy clothes and hats), and so we’re not going to the Kentucky Derby, even though we’ll be driving to Lexington that day. (I really hope the traffic isn’t bad.) We are visiting a horse ranch in Lexington next week, and so we’ll get to see some of the thoroughbred horses then.

The only other thing I did yesterday was to work some more on my embroidery piece. When we’re so busy sight-seeing, it doesn’t leave a lot of time for slow-stitching, and so I was happy to make some progress on this.

Now I’ve moved my hoop. All that’s left is to finish stitching the trees on the right and left side…and a little bit of the roof, of course. I expect I’ll finish this sometime next week.

As I've been writing Mike and I have been deciding whether to try going for a walk downtown. I expect we'll do it, and hope for the best weather-wise. We have a way of being both lucky and unlucky in that way. The unlucky part generally comes when we're trying to we leave home and the best laid plans get all F'd up. Somehow we manage to choose dry spells for our outdoor excursions. We'll see if the rule holds today. In any case, we're going to the brewery. We'll get some lunch and keep our fingers crossed about the t-shirt prospects.