The Last Racing Weekend!

Life has been a little busy around here and we haven't been able to get away to our home Arkansas as much as we would like.  We did go this past weekend thou.  It was a must!  It had been a month and it was the Last weekend of Racing at Oaklawn.  That would be Thoroughbred Horse Racing.  The Arkansas Derby was running on Saturday, which was the last chance to earn points at Oaklawn to advance to the Kentucky Derby. The Arkansas Derby is a Million dollar purse.  So we were excited that we would watch a horse run that would be at the Kentucky Derby.

We spent ten hours at the track that day.  We started out with Dawn at Oaklawn. On certain mornings, Oaklawn host this event at 8am.  They provide coffee and pastries, you get to watch the morning workouts and they have several speakers.

They also offer barn tours on one of the vans.  I was excited to get behind that fence and see the going ons.

We only saw a couple of fancy trailers.....Not what you would expect expensive race horses to traveling in.

This is nice!

All the barns are named after famous race horses.

On the tour our bus driver pointed out a log building that was just inside the fence that is for track people, but said we could eat there to.  He explained that you better be going straight to the restaurant.  He also said food in there was about half the cost of anything inside the track.  Since, we had a lot of time to kill, we decided to go have a late breakfast.  The breakfast was HUGE! For five dollars, I got scrambled eggs, hash browns, a biscuit with gravy, (YUM) and 3 pieces of bacon.  Lots of trainers and barn help filtered in and out.  Some just came in to place their wagers for the day.  Yep, they had several machines in there, so bets could be placed.
I was really glad that I got out of bed and went!  I see me making several early trips next year.  And hey, when you go that early, you get to park, Really close!