UF vs UK: Lexington, Kentucky

After two full days of bourbon tasting and touring, we completed the Kentucky Bourbon Trail in Lexington. We spent the rest of the weekend there to tour the city and campus, and to attend the Gator game on Saturday. Our friend Julianne used to live in Lexington so she gave us several recommendations and we managed to hit up most of them.

Friday afternoon we took a very short break from bourbon and had our first beer of the trip. After that we returned to bourbon. It was very noticeable in all the bars that instead of the neon signs advertising beers that we are used to seeing, they were all signs for bourbons. And all the bars had a huge liquor selection, but not many beers on tap. Clearly they have a preference and we thoroughly enjoyed it. We bar hopped for a few hours and had dinner at Saul Good, which had opened just a few weeks before and lived up to its name.

 

Saturday morning we finally got to sleep in for the first time on this trip, since the game wasn't until 7pm. We had lunch at Tin Roof and stopped at Two Keys for a few drinks before making our way towards campus. 

Their campus was very open and spread out, and it was a nice mile long walk or so to the stadium. We always love touring other campuses and comparing them to our own, which of course we are biased toward ;)

total accident that our GPS took us along the convenient "cat path" towards the stadium

this one's for you, dad! :)

a Christmas tree! so random

The official UF alumni tailgate was not very good, so that was disappointing. We walked around that area for a while and made some new gator friends for the day to watch the other games that were on TV until ours started. It was glaringly obvious that Kentucky is a basketball school, as even for a night game there just wasn't much going on during the day until right before kickoff. Not too surprising just interesting to experience!

As usual we went into the stadium fairly early to watch all of Kentucky's pre-game traditions. We had amazing seats - row 3, right along the endzone, in the Gator section.  Kentucky is much more generous with their visitor section than most other teams. Out of 14 teams in our conference, UK was the 10th SEC campus we've visited, and the 9th SEC stadium where we've attended a football game. Only five more to go!

And as many of you already know....we were on TV!! We didn't have very good cell phone reception in the stadium, but we knew it as soon as our phones started blowing up with everyone who felt obligated to inform us. For those of you who might have missed it, we got enough pictures sent to us from people who paused their TV's when we were on screen, that we could probably recreate the entire footage of our 5 second feature on ESPN. Kentucky had just scored a touchdown to tie it 7-7, and right after that we missed a field goal - both of these plays were in the endzone right front of us. We've beaten Kentucky the past 25 years in a row, but our team is not very good this year. Everyone kept telling us that if UK was ever going to beat UF, this was their year. All I knew was that if we lost, I did not want to be there. So you know how they always show sad fans on TV for the opposing team?! Yea, we were those fans.

biting my nails on national television. sweet.

This is also the very reason why we always have our picture taken before kickoff. After that, we go into game-time mode, which is clearly very intense and not so photograph-friendly. I'm pretty sure this is my stance all game, every game. Man this team stresses me out big time. But we still love going to games. Makes zero sense, I know. We are just crazy.

Coach Muschamp was not too impressed either...

Thankfully, we managed to pull off a win, 24-7. Unfortunately this game is shaping up to be the Gators' only win on the road this entire season. Sad times, gator fans. Sad times. Hoping for a miracle this coming weekend in Columbia.

This was our first visit to the state of Kentucky (a new pin in our map!) and we absolutely loved it. The scenery was gorgeous, the fall weather was perfect, the people were so friendly, and overall we were very happily surprised with how much we enjoyed it. So much so, that we definitely want to go back and have added a few more trips to Kentucky on our bucket list, so we hope to return again... some day. We have quite a long list! ;)