How to Find the Airport

I had to get Princess to the airport in Lexington to catch a 6AM plane. It's a two-hour drive from my home, and when you get off the interstate, you think, "Thank God I'm finally off the interstate." Then on the way back, you think "Thank God I'm finally back on the interstate."

Yes, I know you can fly out of Louisville cheaper, which is what my husband and I always did. Old folks will gladly drive an extra two hours to save a few hundred dollars. But my kids are college students, and for them it is hard to get a ride to a nearby airport, much less one far away. The Louisville airport is easy to find. Lexington? Not so much.

See, Lexington is not designed like other cities. A few years ago, someone on TV was trying to give directions to a business in Lexington, and I remarked, "Lexington is designed like a spider web." My husband's face got that look as if he had a lightbulb over his head, and he said, "That explains everything!" He was a truck driver for years. "Lexington was the only city I ever got lost in."

Yes, all the major arteries in Lexington lead to Rupp Arena in the center of town. It's easy to get there; difficult to find your way out. Then there are roads that circle around, crossing those arteries: New Circle Road, which changes from busy business district with stoplights to a highway with ramps and back again in the blink of an eye, and Man o' War Boulevard, which is newer, further out, and doesn't quite go all the way around.The airport is at the end of Man o' War, and the Man o' War exit is one of the first you encounter going north to Lexington, but if you take that exit to get to the airport, it will take you another hour to get there.   

Now, I've been to that airport enough times to know my way, but it was dark and raining and I knew I'd have to navigate by signs this time. If you don't live in Lexington and have to find the airport for the first time, you WILL have a "turn around and go back" incident, maybe several of them, because the signage sucks. Almost all of the exit signs, either on the interstate or an internal highway, are labeled "Lexington" or else a random small town that is not Lexington. Some have both, but the biggest part of them are just "Lexington." Very helpful.

The airport exit off I-75 is fairly well labeled, as long as you're looking for it. Newtown Pike helpfully has warnings of which lane you should be in to get on New Circle East or New Circle West a half-mile before the intersection. But the ramp that actually goes to New Circle West is not labeled at all. You just have to know to take that ramp. Behind the ramp is a nice sign for New Circle East, which is across the bridge, and will take you all the way around the city before you can look for the airport again. Or you can turn around and go back.

By the way, you need to take New Circle West to get to the airport, but somewhere along the way it becomes New Circle South.

Driving down New Circle West, or South, you look for an airport sign, but there aren't any. The exit you want is Versailles 5B, shown above, which says nothing about an airport. At the very point of exit, there's another sign that looks just like the one above. Apparently, someone at some time realized they needed to add some information, so they put a smaller sign near it that says something like "This ramp to ... KEENLAND." And as an afterthought, they later added "Airport" underneath it in smaller letters. If you don't see that small sign in time, you can take exit 5A and then turn around and go back.  If you don't see it at all, you'll end up out in the countryside.

Once you are past those points, finding the airport is fairly easy. But then you have to leave it and find the interstate again. The signs in the other direction also wait until the very last minute, when you are in the wrong lane, to explain where the ramp goes. And you have to keep up with New Circle North and South instead of New Circle East and West, as you did coming in.

I took no wrong turns on this trip, only because I've been there a few times. I can only imagine how difficult that trip would be for someone who had never been to the airport -especially someone without an accurate GPS device guiding them. It was still dark and rainy the entire way home, but at least on the way home I wasn't worried about catching a plane.