Well, after a half-hearted attempt last year on the way to Indy with my riding buddy Fritz (and his Aprilia with 100k miles on it) by visiting the Four Roses distillery...
This year, I thought I'd make a better attempt. Originally, I'd planned to be on the KY Bourbon Trail by Saturday afternoon but some mis-routing led me astray...and then Hurricane Sandy messed up my RTB plans...
I left out of Savannah on Friday for Deals Gap, arriving at the Deals Gap Campground/Hotel around 3pm...it's about 400 miles from my place to Deals Gap. There were lots of bikes in the parking lot and the Gap was busy...but not too busy. BTW, the "new" place across the street has a cell phone booster and Verizon customers can get one bar in the middle of the building...otherwise, no dice in that general area for any cell phone carrier.
I got a good run down and back and parked the bike. I'll post a pic or two from the 3 photogs along rt 129 later.
The scenery wasn't too bad...the leaves were spectacular...
It's not a bad thing to see this on the GPS:
The campground was mostly deserted...
And, by 530pm the parking lot was mostly deserted. All that was left were the folks staying at the hotel and a few folks passing thru.
It got down to around 40 degrees, but I came prepared to camp in cool weather and had a restful night. The folks at DG are doing a great job maintaining the place with super clean bathrooms and facilities.
The next morning I headed out around 8 and had the road mostly to myself.
I had planned on camping at Fort Boonesborough SP in Kentucky, it looked nice from the description and was close enough to the Bourbon Trail for me to hit a distillery or two. As I closed to within a mile or two, I realized that Fritz and I camped there last year and it sucked donkey balls. It's a huge day use area with lots of non-campers driving thru the campground and really crappy campsites (piles of trash in the fire pits) and bathrooms (full of spider webs, dirty, and poorly maintained).
So, I decided to go East towards a known good campground: Natural Bridge SP. Fritz and I camped there and it is very nice and has a fantastic place to eat just .5 mile from the campground (Miguels). The campground was busier this time of year, but I still got a site and a bundle of firewood.
This park is in a dry county but there's a beer shack just a few miles east on the county line with a surprisingly good selection of beer. After a feeble attempt at fire and 3 beers, I hit the hay around 9pm.
After a night of heavy rain, I packed my wet stuff and made straight for Loretto, KY which didn't look too far away on the GPS...yeah, it's on the other side of the state from Slade, KY where I camped...and the GPS thought it was in another time zone which made Loretto (where MM is located) seem a lot closer. And...I'd overlooked the part where they don't open on Sunday until 130pm...so when I arrived at 11am (their normal opening) I had the place to myself with nothing to do. I rode out to Lebanon, KY and ate at a Mexican place on the main drag.
So, when I arrived at MM for the second time, they were open! I'd signed up to be an "Ambassador" and let them know I'd be there on Sunday. They had a nametag and pin for me. Otherwise, we all got the same tour.
Eh, if you've seen one Mash Tank, you've seen 'em all, right? These were over 11k gallons.
Makers Mark is proud of their 5 story distillation tower, once done the "white liquor" pours thru these two spigots to undergo further distillation before being put in barrels.
If you look closely, you can see the liquor coming out.
We got a peek (and a taste!) in the fermentation room...they had about half dozen or so 9600 gallon tanks just bubbling away.
http://youtu.be/TkyMt9IM57QThe buildings are all painted a dark gray on account of the evaporating methanol encourages a certain kind of black fungus to grow on everything. So, rather than constantly paint over the fungus they just paint the buildings to match.
MM does not age their Bourbon for a specific time, rather they age it until it's done (5-6 years). They know it's done by taste! BTW, they also rotate their barrels in their two dozen warehouses around the area.
Yeah, some folks come for the scenery and info..but most come for free bourbon! L-R: Makers White (barely diluted liquor that has not been barrelled), MM, Makers 46 (specially aged MM from recipe 46).
After a brief explanation of what we were tasting...it was done!
I was disappointed at the number of folks who left 1 or 2 of their drinks untouched..it was probably over half. Weird.
On account of Hurricane Sandy, I decided to forgo heading into western NC and decided to choose a westerly route to RTB.
My campground last night:
The last day was about 450 miles of riding and I made time for my "go to" place for a decent meal.
I got home to welcome 60 degree temps...it was a great trip!
