Category: Kentucky
Passing Through Kentucky

Passing Through Kentucky

By |

Hey Guys!! We spent about a week (six nights) in Georgetown, Kentucky on our way back down to Tennessee. We had just enough time to visit a National Park unit that was close and to squeeze in a distillery tour…and, of course, we found some foodies.

Camp Nelson Heritage National Monument started out as a supply depot and hospital during the Civil War in 1863.

Camp Nelson grew to be one of the largest recruitment and training centers for African American soldiers and eventually a refugee camp for the soldier’s wives and children. There is a great little museum at the Visitor Center that takes you through the history of Camp Nelson and a very informative film you can watch.

The original Camp Nelson covered around 4,000 acres and had over 300 buildings on the grounds. There’s only one building that was standing during the time of Camp Nelson…the big white house with the canon in front of it. Now, you’ll find a few hiking trails that take you around the property to see where the different forts and some of the buildings once stood. The National Park Service has rebuilt a few buildings…they were all locked up when we went so we didn’t get to go in them. The day we went was the hottest day Kentucky had seen so far in 2021. It was definitely close to triple digits and as you can see from the pics…there’s not a lot of shade. We walked around a little, but with the buildings all locked up…we didn’t spend a whole lot of time exploring this NP unit.

A few years ago we visited Kentucky to do the Bourbon Trail…if you missed that post, you can find it here. While we were doing the Bourbon Trail, Charles decided he wanted to come back to Kentucky with us when he turned 21 so he could do the tasting that goes along with a distillery tour. So…here we are…back in Kentucky so we can take our now 21 year old on his first official distillery tour and tasting. We took him to Woodford Reserve which is one of our favorites from last time. It was just as picturesque as I remembered it to be and the tour was the right amount of history, science and comedy to make it interesting.

It was weird to be there with our adult kid. It was definitely fun to see it all through his eyes. I don’t do the tastings…it’s not my thing…but I do make sure to grab some candy. Woodford has one of the best mixed candy boxes we’ve found so far!

We were only in Kentucky for six nights…but Guys…there’s always time for good foodies! We ate at two places and both were fantastic. The burgers were from Bru Burgers and we can’t recommend it enough. The bbq was from Red State BBQ and it was awesome too. When you go to a bbq place, the sides…in my opinion…are just as important as the smoked meat. and this place has a great selection of really good southern sides. Highly recommend Red State BBQ!

We were in Kentucky at the end of August and it was miserably hot the entire time we were there. We didn’t have a whole lot of time in KY, but we enjoyed the time we had…even with the heat.

See Y’all down the road!

#NationalParkTour

Bourbon And More Part Two

Bourbon And More Part Two

By |

Hey Guys!! Are you ready for Part Two? While we spent a good portion of our time exploring distilleries, that’s not all we did while we were in Kentucky! I know that’s what you were thinking! ;-P

We stayed at a small RV park right outside of Bardstown, KY. It was just close enough to everything to be convenient and just far enough away from everything that we didn’t feel like we were in town.

Abraham Lincoln was born in Kentucky. The place where he was born is now a National Park. About where the cabin he was born in sat, is now a memorial. Inside the memorial you can see a cabin that is of the same time period taken from the area, but it’s not the actual cabin Lincoln was born in. We learned about Lincoln’s early years before he moved to Illinois while we were there doing the Junior Rangering. It was a nice little park and we went on a beautiful day!

We also made it to Mammoth Cave National Park where the boys got some more Junior Rangering done!

Sooo…I don’t know if you know this…but caves are really dark. I know, I know…it was a shock to us too. Ha! Just kidding. I took loads of pictures in the hopes that at least a few would come out. I tried, Guys! I really did. We signed up for a cave tour before we went. We wanted to do more than one, but apparently, cave tours are super popular and we waited too long. Bummer. Our tour group was huge…close to 100 people. We weren’t really expecting that. Somehow we ended up at the back of the group and every time we got to the next Ranger stop, the Ranger had already finished up talking. We caught the tail end of her spiel a couple of times, but not enough to really tell you about. This was the first time we’ve had that happen…and honestly…we didn’t like it. At all. We are a family of total nerds…one of the best things about the tours for us is the learning… The NPS really needs to have smaller cave tour groups.

At one point during the tour the Ranger turned off all the lights and talked to us by lantern light so we could see what the miners were really dealing with. It was DARK!

One of the best parts of the tour was the Fat Man’s Misery! Nicholas had no problems with this super narrow section of the cave. And Guys, it was really narrow.

Right after the Fat Man’s Misery is the Tall Man’s Misery where even I (at my 5’1″ …with the right shoes on…height) had to bend over. It’s hard to see, but the guy in the picture was the guy right behind me during the tour. He had to have been close to 6’4″ and had a really difficult time with both the Misery sections. He was nice enough to pause and let me snap his picture. This cave tour is not for someone who struggles with claustrophobia.

We’d only been in one other cave and then a lava tube when we did this cave tour so we didn’t really know what to expect with Mammoth Cave. We would like to go back sometime and do some of the other tours that we missed out on. Maybe if we go during the off season the tour groups will be smaller?

Bardstown is a pretty small town, but we did find a couple of foodies. In the left picture above is a Southern Burger with pimento cheese and fried green tomatoes. Now, you might remember I had something similar to this in Charleston, SC and it was pretty darn amazing! I had high hopes for this Southern Burger…it was decent. It would have been a lot better if the pimento cheese wasn’t so sweet. Honestly, it left me wanting to go back to SC and get the other burger. If you look at the mess of stuff in the right picture…you’ll see what is called a Kentucky Hot Brown! And it’s pretty darn good!! It’s hard to tell from the picture above, but it’s an open-faced sandwich with ham, turkey, and bacon. If you get the chance to try one, take it!! You won’t regret it!

Are you ready for some pretties?! I took quite a few pictures of pretties, but I’ll just share a few with you!

I love the colors of the one in the bottom right picture!!

That’s it for our Kentucky adventures!!

See y’all down the road!

#minieasternloop2017

Bourbon And More Part One

Bourbon And More Part One

By |

Hey Guys!! We spent two weeks in the Bourbon Capitol of the World! You might know it better as Bardstown, KY. 95% of all bourbon sold today is made in Kentucky.

We did so much during our two weeks in this area, I’m going to break it up into two different posts. Let’s get started with post one!

There is an official Kentucky Bourbon Trail that includes ten distilleries spread out all over Kentucky. If you pick up a KBT passport you can get a stamp at each distillery as you visit it. When you’ve got all ten stamps you can turn in the passport at the old court house in Bardstown to receive a free shirt! We hadn’t planned on doing the whole trail, but who can pass up a free shirt?

Some of the distilleries were in town, but several were out in the country. The road in the picture above is very typical of the roads we traveled while in Kentucky! Very windy and very narrow…pretty much one lane. I’m so glad we didn’t have to take the RV down all of these roads!

To legally be considered bourbon, a whiskey must be made from a grain mixture that is at least 51% corn. We ended up going to twelve different distilleries. We didn’t do tours at all of them. We skipped tours at three due to timing.

Whiskey used to be so valuable that it could be traded for goods and services, just like money. We were able to see different parts of the brewing process at the different distilleries. At the one in the picture above, we were able to taste the mash while it was brewing. It was kind of like a tasteless soggy oatmeal…not very good.

To be considered bourbon, the whiskey has to be distilled to no more than 160 proof. The percentage of alcohol that evaporates during the aging process is called “the angel’s share”.

My favorite part of the distillery tour is getting to visit the rick houses. The rick house is where the bourbon barrels are stored to age. Each distillery has their own way of aging a barrel. In fact, each distillery usually has several different ways depending on the type of bourbon they’re working on.

A standard bourbon barrel holds 53 gallons of whiskey.

During Prohibition, the Government Revenuers who were tasked with finding illegal moonshine stills could look in the forest for trees that were starting to turn black. Check out the tree in the right picture above. The bark is completely black with a sugar mold that’s the bi-product of the distilling process. Due to the tale-tell black sugar mold giving away their locations… the moonshine distillers would have to constantly move their operation because of the black sugar mold that grew on everything near the still. And I do mean everything…check out the lamp in the left picture above. I can’t imagine living close to one of these big distillers and trying to keep the sugar mold off my stuff!

A bourbon barrel can only be used once to age bourbon, but distilleries ship used bourbon barrels to Scotland and Ireland for the use in the maturation of Scotch and Irish whiskey. Most of the rick houses are painted black to help hide the sugar mold.

During Prohibition, the only way to get whiskey was to get a prescription from your doctor. Whiskey is good for what ails you. *wink, wink* Before Prohibition there were around 2,000 distilleries in Kentucky. During Prohibition six distilleries obtained a license to make medicinal whiskey. During the years of Prohibition, Kentucky saw some of it’s sickest days on record. There were right around 6 million prescriptions written for “medicinal” whiskey in thirteen years for a population of less than 1 million. During World War II the government used bourbon distilleries to make fuel alcohol and penicillin.

Did you know:  All bourbon is whiskey, but not all whiskey is bourbon.

Maker’s Mark Distillery is one of our favorite tours. The grounds are nice, the tours are interesting and the tasting is fun.

A bourbon barrel has to made of oak. Most of the trees come from the forests of Missouri.

My favorite part of the Maker’s Mark tour is this hallway! The whole ceiling in that hallway is filled with Chihuly glass! It’s absolutely gorgeous!!

Each bottle of Maker’s Mark is hand-dipped in red wax. The other very cool thing about the Maker’s Mark Distillery is getting to dip your own bottle! Jerl was pretty excited to dip a bottle and then he was torn between saving the whole bottle or drinking it. Ha!

Kentucky is the birthplace of bourbon, but it’s not the only state that makes it. Kentucky’s bourbon distilleries fill over 1 million barrels with bourbon a single year.

The Jim Beam Distillery is another one that stands out for us. The campus is set up like an old farm stead. The tasting at Jim Beam was different from all of the other tours. Have you ever seen a bourbon dispenser? It was a first for us too. While the dispenser was cool…I liked the other tasting better because you were given information about what you were tasting and tips on how to taste it.

Did you know:  Bourbon barrels must be charred in order to be compliant with the laws of making bourbon. We ended our Bourbon Trail Adventures with a trip to the Kentucky Cooperage where most of the barrels are made. The picture above is actually from the Bulleit Distillery. We weren’t allowed to take any pictures at the cooperage. But Guys…it was really cool! If you ever get a chance to go visit one…do! We got to see the barrels made from logs to barrels…we got to see them getting charred and then tested to make sure they weren’t going to leak! The cooperage was one of the highlights of our entire time in Kentucky!

Un-aged bourbon goes by many names here are a few: white dog, moonshine, hooch, and white lightening. Every distillery we went to we ended up with something…as you can imagine, we accumulated quite a collection of souvenirs. Now to figure out where we’re going to store all of these souvenirs. Ha!

Rebecca Ruth is said to be the original maker of the bourbon ball. There are a few different varieties of them, but the chocolate is my favorite. And…not all bourbon balls are the same. They vary in taste and texture quite a bit. I, of course, had to try them every time they were available and let me tell you…some are amazing and some are…well…not.

Each year almost 120,000 mint juleps are sold during the two-day event known as the Kentucky Oaks and the Kentucky Derby. I’ve always been curious about mint juleps and at one of the distilleries we came across a mint julep mix in a small bottle. I had high hopes…I’ll let my face tell you what I thought about it. I’m so glad it was just a small single serve bottle. Maybe a mix from a different distillery would be better? It’ll be awhile before I get the urge to try it again.

September is National Bourbon Heritage Month…it’s also my birthday…if anyone is looking for gift ideas…I did find this little gem. Bourbon Cream by Buffalo Trace is…well, it’s a little magical. I like a little of this in some root beer…it’s soooo good! It’s like a grown up root beer float!

Kentucky cows are very happy cows. The grain mash that’s left over after the distilling process is called distiller’s grain (slop) and is given to farms to feed their cows.

And…then there’s the ice cream. It’s mine. Aaaallll mmmiiinnnne!!! *insert evil laugh here* But seriously, the bourbon ball ice cream should be illegal.

That’s it for the Kentucky Bourbon Trial! Stay tuned for Bourbon and More Part Two!!

See y’all down the road!

#minieasterntrail2017

Pizza Roundup Hometown Pizza

Pizza Roundup Hometown Pizza

By |

To my fellow pizza lovers!

I bring a post of a bad pizza place. I am sorry to say that Hometown Pizza in Kentucky is not good.

The service was ok, the pizza was ok and the spaghetti was bad.

The décor was ok and the bathrooms were at least clean.

With all that I think a 3 star review is in order.

 We felt kind of disappointed with the pizza here so we got Little Caesars… twice… and it was so much better.

See y’all next time on…

Pizza Street!

I do like some crazy bread and crazy sauce… so good!

Frankfort, KY

Frankfort, KY

By |

Hey Guys!! We made it to Kentucky!!

We spent a week in the Frankfort area at a cute little RV park called Elkhorn Campground. We didn’t get a pull-through, but that’s the only complaint I have about this campground. We scored a spot with some shade, the park was nicely kept up and the owners were super nice!

My favorite thing about this area is all of the horse farms! Love!! We didn’t get to visit any this time due to lack of time…but we’ve already decided (for various reasons) that Kentucky will be a regularly visited state once we’re done with the #50statetour!

We came to the Frankfort area to visit the State Capitol Building…and some distilleries that happen to be in the area.

The Kentucky SCB is one of the smaller ones we’ve been in. I love this staircase. Long clean lines made of marble…it just works for me. You can stand at one end of the building and see all the way to the other end. It’s that small. But look how gorgeous it is! Notice that you can see the staircase in both above pictures!

And Guys… the dome changes colors! What, what?!? Ohhh…be amazed!! I mean it. Be amazed. A color changing dome was a first for us…and y’all know how many of these SCBs we’ve been to. It’s a beautiful dome all on its own, but when you add the color change…it’s the cherry on top.

We did go into the House and Senate Chambers. They weren’t anything to write home about. Simple. Clean. Classic. Does the job.

We went to find Daniel Boone’s grave and stumbled upon this magnificent view of the SCB with the nearby river.

We did make it to Daniel Boone’s grave. It’s got a great view. We’ve heard a lot about Boone and his life this past year as we were heading down the East Coast. We heard about him in Texas… he had a pretty big role in our Country’s history.

We had planned on hitting a couple of distilleries while we were in the area…because you know, it is Bourbon Country. 😉 We found out right before we went to our first tour that there’s an entire Kentucky Bourbon Trail!! And, if you complete the whole tour you get a free shirt! Challenge excepted!!

One of my favorite parts of a distillery tour is getting to go into the rick house. I love the sight of all of those barrels neatly stacked up! It speaks to the little organizer OCD girl that I am. You can see them through the windows in the left picture above. We didn’t get to go into the rick houses on all of the tours, but we got to go in a few of them.

Did you know: All of the distilleries conduct experiments. Bourbon experiments. If you look closely, you can find a barrel or two of the experimental bourbon as you walk through the rick houses. In the above left picture, I wanted to show you how big the rick houses really are.

We learned something new at each distillery. They each have their own start up stories and histories. Every distillery has their own way of doing things and spin on the grains they use. We find that kind of thing interesting.

To be bourbon it has to be made of at least 51% corn. Each distillery has its own unique twist on what that other 49% is. Different grains grown in different areas under different circumstances. Even the water used is taken into consideration. It’s actually all very scientific.

All of the tours come with a tasting. All of the distilleries have their own take on this too. Woodford Reserve is our favorite distillery so far! We loved everything about it. Setting, tour, buildings we saw, and tasting!

Bourbon balls…supposedly, Rebecca Ruth is the inventor of the bourbon ball. She still has a store around so we went to check it out. The Rebecca Ruth store makes the candy for several surrounding distilleries. She’s certainly proud of her chocolates…they were super pricey for what you get. We got a box of mixed bourbon candies to try and honestly Guys, they were just ok for us. Especially after we tried some of the other candies around that she doesn’t make. When we tried the bourbon balls from Woodford Reserve, well…we realized how mediocre the other candies had been. The bourbon balls from Woodford Reserve weren’t just good…they were…eyes-roll-in-the-back-of-your-head good! Like…that-was-so-good-we-need-to-go-buy-the-biggest-box-they-have good! (And we did) We liked them. Just a little. ;-P

The boys weren’t left out of the tastings. They got different things at each. Apple juice, root beer, chocolates. They didn’t’ mind. Plus, all three of them area science nerds and they all loved the chemistry that goes into making the “perfect” bourbon.
We did get a few souvenirs. Just a few. I mean…who knows when we’ll be back in the area.

We saw some cute souvenirs we would have liked to have but didn’t get them since we don’t have a place to set them out. It’ll be an excuse to go back and visit again! We thoroughly enjoyed our time in the Frankfort area and look forward to visiting again!!

See y’all down the road!

#minieasternloop2017