Horse Racing Day

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My husband has been thinking about taking the kids to the horse racing park for a long time and about two weeks ago we finally put it into action. We took them to the Delaware Park. This was also my first personal experience with horse racing.

Normally there are about four or five thousand people going there during the regular weekends but that weekend there must have been at least ten thousand as it was Kentucky Derby day and almost all of the picnic tables and restaurant tables were reserved.

The weather was perfect, 70 degrees, sunny and breezy. The Delaware Park was beautiful. Except for the race tracks, the park had tons of activities set up for the kids on a large lawn area. There was a moon bounce, an air slide, a play ground with jungle gym, a pony ride ring and a huge sand box where people could play sand volleyball and make sand castles.

Inside the main club, we saw lots of people making bets and a lot more sitting there and keeping a close eye on races from other parks which were shown on the TVs. It only got very noisy when a race was approaching to an end. So for some reason it did not give me as much headache as a casino would.

We didn’t make any bets as we knew absolutely nothing about the horses in the race. Not having to worry about losing, sitting outside on the stadium seats under the shade of the grandstand with a light breeze was really nice and relaxing. The race track, the blue sky, the green lawn and a pond with ducks paddling in the middle all formed a beautiful picture in front of us.  The race horses were, of course, very beautiful as well.

After seeing only one round of race, Olivia noticed something interesting.

“Daddy, all the people who rode the horses were little.”

“Yeah, do you know why that is?”  Daddy asked.

“No.”

“Because the horse has to carry the weight of the rider, the little the rider, the less weight the horse has to carry during the race. If your daddy rides one of these horses, that horse is never going to win.” Daddy explained.

I could not help but laughing.

We watched a couple more races. Then Olivia and Evan spent a lot of time in the playground, especially the air slide.

I noticed that out of all the people at the park, I only saw two Oriental families. Looks like Oriental people are not so hot for horse racing. Initially, I was not really interested in the idea of coming here either but I am glad I did. We have to give new experiences at least a try, right?