(Originally visited 3 April 2005.)

Finding President Taylor’s grave was easier than finding our hotel that evening.

We drove back roads on the Indiana side of the Ohio river from Cincinnati to Louisville. My traveling companions were my fiancée and our little Havanese puppy. Since we weren’t in a hurry when decided to avoid the interstate highways. That way we got a little local flavor rather than the bland monotony of the same franchise restaurants off each exit.

We set off early in the afternoon after an extended rainstorm the previous day. The streams we crossed were flooded and the great river swollen. The bright sunshine brought out the green of spring which hadn’t yet appeared back east where we live.

I’ve noticed that I’m appreciating spring more this year. I don’t recall feeling the same joy that I’ve felt these past few weeks watching the world around me emerge from winter. Hope is tangible again. No matter how bad things get in the human world, and I think things are going to get much worse before they get better, spring comes regardless.

We arrived at the cemetery and as I prepared to take some pictures, my digital camera wouldn’t activate. I must’ve forgotten to recharge the batteries so I abandoned my girls and drove off in search of four AAs. Ceiba didn’t care. She loved the grass in the cemeteries we visited in Kentucky. She was rolling in it like a cat on nip. I tried to capture her joy in pictures, but the images all looked like a bad toupee discarded in disgust.

She appears in the picture above posing in front of Taylor’s mausoleum. The doors to the crypt were, of course, locked. Not pictured is Taylor’s original resting place which lies behind the current structure.

After the cemetery we drove off in search of our hotel in eastern Louisville. We followed the signs off the exit and were dropped into miles of modern American commerce on both sides of a six lane road that looks just like every other suburban strip of consumerism in the country. Despite directions from the internet and local Starbucks employees it took us several tries and more than an hour to find the place.

After a good night’s sleep we were off to Frankfort and Richard Mentor Johnson.