We arrived near noon at the Louisville Slugger Museum and Factory and it was easy to see where the building was located by this huge bat outside the entrance:
After paying for our tickets, we went to the area where they started the factory tours:
There was a short movie clip and our tour guide announced that there would not be any photos allowed once we went into the factory area - competitive reasons. It was a very interesting tour where they actually have 2 production areas - one for retail bats and one for professional bats. The only difference is that the professional bats are made only from the best of the "billets" that are used. These billets (3" in diameter, 37" long) are obtained from white ash trees and maple trees that are at least 80 years old. They grow their own trees and they indicated that they plant 4 new trees for each tree that is harvested from their nearly 7,500 acres of timber they own in Pennsylvania and New York. They manufacture 1.8 million bats per year. Up until 1983, the bats were all made manually with lathes. The whole process is now totally automated and they produce a new bat every 25 seconds. The tour concluded in an area where each person on the tour was given a small bat as a keepsake from this bin:
We then went through the very interesting museum where there were lots of statistics, pictures and displays of famous players using their custom versions of the bats. Below are pictures of figures of Babe Ruth and Ken Griffey, Jr that were on the museum floor:
The other interesting shot below is of the display that showed how the "billets" are obtained from the trees:
and we ended the visit in the gift shop:
and went through an area just off the lobby where there was a small theater where we watched another 10 minute movie clip, and a room filled with Normal Rockwell paintings and pictures of sports - again, no photos were allowed (?):
Since we were not allowed to take pictures of the actual production areas, we snapped these 2 pictures through the window outside while walking back to our car:
It was great experience and we were happy that we went.
It was then off to the hotel and casino in Elizabeth, IN. It was only 14 miles away - across the river - so the trip there was only about 20 minutes. It is in the middle of nowhere, and we drove down this country road until all of a sudden this complex appeared:
The hotel was attached, and in the rear of the complex:
Let me tell you, it was a huge disappointment. The hotel was nice enough, but the casino was a long walk from the hotel portion of the complex, and was the worse casino we could ever remember as far as payout percentages. Usually, casino slots will have a 90 -92 % payout. These slots had to be around 10-20 % payouts. We won nothing on many machines we tried and we didn't see any people winning anything on the other machines either. We went to the casino twice - before dinner, and after dinner - and left frustrated both times. Sometimes we lose, but we usually have a little playing time on the machines before we leave. We concluded that this was a result of it being the only casino within hundreds of miles, so they don't have to be competitive. At any rate, it may be a long time before we return here again.
I had to wait until we returned home in order to complete this entry. The response time was so slow at the hotel this morning that I decided to wait until we got home to download the photos. It's a good thing, as we came close to our 11 AM checkout time.
Today was another exciting day for Josie's birthday, and I'll have that entry in the AM tomorrow...
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