I took Kyle to the Whitaker Bank Ballpark for Touch-A-Truck 2018.  He was so excited about going! He has carried the ad for it around with him everywhere he went for the last 3 weeks. He was even taking it to bed with him! That is how excited he was about going to Touch-A-Truck. He was going to make sure I wasn’t going to forget about it. He was looking forward to seeing the cop car, the crane and the “tow tow truck” the most. He talked about those three continuously and if I heard “I hope I get to see the cop car first” once, I heard it a dozen times.

It was a gloomy and rainy day, but Kyle was not going to let that stop him from exploring all the neat trucks that they had there. I would say that because of the rain, the turnout was smaller than expected.  From 12 pm to 1 pm, they gave kids the opportunity to explore the trucks without the lights and sirens going.  This is a good idea for kids who get upset over a lot of noise and lights.  Then it opened for everyone else from 1 pm to 5 pm.  We took advantage of the early time.  If we had waited, Kyle would not have had as good a time.

The location was new this year and it was a good location. I was told that if it had been at the old location, they would have had to cancel it. They said that this is the first year since they started doing Touch-A-Truck, that it has rained. So, what did we see when we were there?

I decided that the best way was to start at one end and just walk all the way around, visiting each truck.  The first one was the race truck.  He got to look at it, climb in and explore it a little.  Since we were there early and there weren’t many kids, he got to spend a little more time looking around than if there had been a line of kids there. He loved climbing around the race truck.  He thought it was “so neat”.

 

Next we moved on to the crane.  He was looking forward to seeing the crane so he was so excited when he saw this one.

Next was the University of Kentucky Engineering Department’s solar powered car.  It was quite interesting to look at.  Kyle wasn’t too interested though.

Pepsi had a truck there.  Kyle got to ride on the lift up into the back of the truck.  He loved it.

 

Columbia Gas brought a backhoe.

As we moved on, the Army was there with a humvee and hummer. Kyle enjoyed checking them out. Of the two, he preferred the humvee.

Next we had to go to the police car.  Kyle was so excited to get to sit in a police car, and even more so when he realized there was a dog in the back seat.

Then we moved on to the “mow mows”. One of Kyle’s continuous obsession’s has always been lawn mowers and he wasn’t going to miss out on the opportunity to sit on one. They even started it for him! Thank you Hillenmeyer!

Doesn’t he look right at home in the last picture?

As we continued on, next was the postal truck…

And the Lextran bus.

Then there were some more exciting trucks!  First was UPS.

Then Kyle got to check out the garbage trucks! They were surprised that Kyle knew what the stabilizers were. He said most 5 year olds don’t even know what stabilizers are, let alone can point them out when they see them. But with Kyle’s fascination of big trucks and cranes, he also is fascinated with the stabilizers on the trucks.

After the garbage trucks, there was the cement truck. Kyle wasn’t quite as sure about this one.

The refrigeration truck was okay though.

Next was the truck Kyle had been waiting for the most! The “tow tow” trucks! They even let him sit in the bulldozer! This was Kyle’s very favorite and he was the only one who got to sit in the heavy duty truck, because it was called out on a job right after Kyle got out.

Batman wasn’t too busy to make an appearance at the Touch-A-Truck event.

And then finally there was the fire truck. He spent the longest here, talking to the firemen and learning about the equipment in the truck.

I think that because of the weather, there were a lot of trucks that must not have shown up, because there was a lot of empty space. They also decided not to do the bouncy houses because of the rain. However, they did have some tables set up inside, there was a silent auction and different companies advertising. Kyle stopped to get a picture with Buckles, the Keeneland Kid’s Club Mascot.

He also stopped at the AKF Lexington Martial Arts booth and got instruction on the proper way to break a board and was given a white belt. He thought that was neat.

Kyle was disappointed because there wasn’t a helicopter even though the ad showed one. I figure that too was because of the rain. Overall though, Kyle had a very good time at Touch-A-Truck. Once they started setting off sirens though, he was more than happy to go home. We will see if he wants to do it again next year. I bet that he will, as long as it’s not raining!