We woke up to pouring rain. What a bummer! We had site seeing plans! It was about 6:30 when we woke up. I decided to make breakfast. I had purchased some sausage patties when we were at the Amish market. I cooked those as well as some pancakes. It was a filling breakfast. I also put a pot roast in the crockpot for dinner tonight.
Around 10:00 the rain let up. It was still sprinkling but not coming down in buckets. There is a flea market just up the street from the campground. We drove over to check out the situation. It seems to be mostly inside so we plan on going over tomorrow morning to see what there is to see.
Next we took off to tour part of the bourbon trail. This is a group of 6 bourbon distilleries in the general area of Bardstown, KY. We traveled to our first stop - Jim Beam. They don't give a complete tour of the facility, like we got a couple of years ago at Jack Daniel's, but you do get to see a movie and a self-directed tour of the house on the property. Many of the Beam family have lived in this house over the years. We did get to taste some of their product. Bill and I decided we are not bourbon drinkers. There were some birds on the grounds but we couldn't tell what they were. We thought maybe they belonged to the vulture family.
Next on our list was a visit to Heaven Hills Bourbon Heritage Center. This company produces many different brands of bourbon. Some of those are Old Fitzgerald, Henry McKenna, Fighting Cock, and others. Their distillery is in Louisville and this facility just does ageing and bottling. They give a little more info on their tour. You also get to do a tasting which they help with. They don't just give you a glass but actually have you do the various steps, color, smell, taste, together. The master distiller at this facility is one of the Beam family, but a different branch than the Jim Beam distillery.
We were planning on visiting the Maker's Mark facility but they close at 3:30 PM and we couldn't get there in time. We will go back next week. I have a passport that if you get a stamp at each of the 6 distilleries you can get a free T-shirt. The other 3 are 50 miles or so away. Those will wait until another day next week.
We decided to try and locate Abraham Lincoln's birthplace and childhood farms. We took the long way around to the childhood farm but we finally got there. The map we were using was certainly not to scale. The cabin they have on the farm is not the original cabin the Lincoln family lived in but it belonged to their neighbors. That means it is over 200 years old. It is in really good shape for something that old. Lincoln's father farmed the 35 acres from the time Lincoln was about 2 until he was about 5 or so.
Lincoln's birthplace is about 11 miles down the road. One thing about this place, they don't like to put signs up. The Park Ranger said to follow a certain road but then it turned but the signs didn't show that. We did finally stop and ask directions. The cabin is inside a marble structure which is currently under restoration so we didn't get to see that. We did get to see the spring they used for water. By this time it was getting to be about 4:30 and we hadn't had lunch so I was getting hungry and getting a headache. Good thing I put dinner on before we left as it was much later when we got home.
We have plans again tomorrow but part of them depend on the weather. We will see. Enjoy the pictures.
2 comments:
I can't believe that marble structure. We were there in the late 1970's, and a man at a little general store on the property told us to just walk in and look around. Now I'm not sure if it was the birthplace or the house Lincoln lived in, but it was much more rustic than those shown in your pictures, and there was certainly no marble structure. I'm glad I went years ago.
I don't like bourbon or whiskey either, but my Kentucky family swears by Makers Mark!
I think the birds were black vulture.
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