Visit Horse Country: The Mill Ridge Experience
Updated: Feb 10, 2021
In November 2020, the Champions of the Track team loaded up our car for a quick, two-day trip to Lexington, Kentucky. We hadn’t been to Kentucky since January and were eager to once again be surrounded by all of the beauty that Lexington had to offer. We had three things on our itinerary: a day at Churchill Downs, a visit to Our Mims Retirement Haven, and a tour of Mill Ridge Farm.
Admittedly, none of us knew much about Mill Ridge before our tour. We were aware that Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf winner Oscar Performance stood stud there, which felt extra relevant due to the fact that we were traveling to Kentucky shortly after the 2020 Breeders’ Cup, but that was about the extent of our knowledge. Nevertheless, we’re always excited to visit somewhere new and learn as much as we can.
We had originally scheduled our tour for early October when we hoped to capture the vibrant fall colors, but life happened and we had to reschedule for November 18th. I feared that the change in date would bring colder weather and less of that beautiful fall foliage I had been admiring on social media, but we were greeted by a sunny day when we woke up on the morning of the 18th.
One of our favorite parts of traveling to Kentucky is trying out a new place to stay to see which areas we liked the best (we’ve stayed in Frankfort, Taylorsville, Bardstown, and in a few different parts of Lexington). This time around, we had booked a fantastic Airbnb on Loudon Ave in Lexington called “The Attic”. This place had some cool horse racing inspired decorations that was great for getting us in the mood to get back out to the farms.
The drive from our Airbnb to Mill Ridge in the morning was so quick and easy as the farm is located on the outskirts of Lexington; one second you’re in the city traffic with buildings all around you, the next you’re driving next to miles of black fences and open fields of rolling hills. It amazes me still, even after visiting Lexington quite a few times!
