(Continued from Part 2)

Friday morning found us off to Metropolis via Louisville.  After a nice breakfast with our friends, we set out on an overcast day, finding our way to OH 562 to get us to  I-75, as I-71 was closed before the bridge to Kentucky.  Not surprisingly, the traffic was a crawl until we got over the bridge and into Kentucky.

It would have picked up more for us, had it not been for the hill. Called the ‘Cut-in-the Hill‘, it climbs about 380 feet over 4 miles, and a calculation over that distance gives it a 2% grade, though the steepest part reaches a about a 3% grade.  And as we were nowhere near up to speed when we hit it, we crawled up at 40 mph, but we weren’t alone, as there were several tractor-trailers in the same situation.

But after that, the drive was pretty nice.  After the rain, the day was a little cooler than the first day, and the engine temperatures didn’t need as much attention, even with the hills and high speeds.  It did still take some attention, as there seemed to be more ‘discourteous’ drivers (not leaving space, weaving in/out of lanes, speeding in excess, cutting nearly sideways across several lanes of traffic to exit suddenly) here than there were in Ohio, and THAT was more than I’m used to dealing with on the road in New York.

But by the time we got to Louisville, though, I was used to it and was being a bit more careful than usual.  Before we were really deep into the city, we had to pull off because the Embroiderer’s Guild of America (EGA) is headquartered in the Butchertown neighborhood.  As my wife is a member of the EGA, and they have a small collection of high quality needlework, we needed to stop.

As the name suggests, Butchertown was originally full of stockyards, and near where the Beargrass Creek was rerouted to, making it a great place to dump all the unwanted trimmings and such so they would float away to the nearby Ohio River.  So it was a great drive along River Road (right along the river) from the Louisville Water Tower Park to what seemed an overly industrial area for embroiderers.

But the EGA Headquarters is in a readapted historic leather work and cotton sash factory and warehouse (The Pointe), so that explained it.  However, the kind of residences that would have been for workers in such a mid-to-late 1800’s area were small and densely packed, and many didn’t have off-street parking to speak of.  Meaning that there wasn’t anywhere for us to park the bus! There were, however, a number of businesses around with large parking lots, so my wife went off to see if any of them would give us permission to park, while I waited in the bus to be technically ‘standing’ in a no-parking area.

After making her way from business to business around the block, she came back to direct me to the parking area of the Butchertown Pizza Hall, where she spoke with one of the owners, and where, as we drove up, employees were moving cars from the back of the lot to give us space to park!  My wife had said that we would definitely buy something there, the owner had said that we didn’t need to, but we were determined to have lunch there after we’d gone to the EGA Headquarters.

Being only a block and a half from the headquarters, it took little time to walk over there and make our way to the back of the building to see what there was. The re-purposed building was high-ceilinged, bright, and airy with terrific heavy wood floors.  The EGA offices were likewise bright and airy, and the displays of needlework were well-displayed over the walls of the small gallery.

We spent a half-hour or so looking over the stitching, the needlework in the display dollhouse, and chatting with the staff members there, especially as one was about to be heading off to Tennessee to watch the eclipse!

After that, we headed back to have some pizza for lunch.

We expected the Butchertown Pizza Hall to have pizza, but they also had wings, so we opted to not get individual lunch specials, but get a pizza with slices of home-made meatballs and mozzarella, and an order of bourbon-honey wings (we were in Kentucky so it made more sense than hot wings).

The pizza was a full 18″ pizza with a fairly thin crust you could fold to eat.  The sauce and meatballs were really nicely spiced/herbed and the pizza as a whole was really filling!  Even with our growing boy, we barely got through half of it.

The wings were just awesome.  And coming from Buffalo, I guess you could say that we’re sort of ‘wing snobs’.  While Buffalo is known as the ‘birth place of chicken wings’, even in Buffalo, people know where the best wings in the city are and what makes a good wing.  The Butchertown Pizza Hall wings had the hallmarks of great wings, being completely cooked through, still tender and juicy, with crispy skin.  The sauce was really well put together, being just a bit sweet and buttery, with a well-rounded bourbon flavor that made them way too easy to eat.

While we finished the wings, we had to get the rest of the pizza to go, and left feeling very satisfied and happy that we’d found the place. It was well worth the stop.

Then we headed off to the Bulleit Distillery, originally the Stitzel-Weller Distillery, which was only 20 minutes away.

(Continued in Part 4)