friends who we had not been able to meet up with yet. To waste time during the day we headed to Lynchburg Tennessee to visit our first distillery; Jack Daniels. We spent the morning both on the tour
and shopping in downtown Lynchburg before making our way back toward Nashville. The tour was very interesting and informative. Our tour guide sounded like he had auditioned for the role of Boomhauer from King of the Hill but was rejected for being too unintelligible. We learned a lot about whisky that day and would have the process repeated over and over to us in the days to come. Lynchburg is in a dry county which means even though you can make whiskey there, you are not allowed to try it. After the tour, instead of the traditional
tasting that accompanies a tour, we were served lemonade and
coffee. Since the Jack Daniels tour took less time than we had originally planned we were able to make a stop at the Stones River Battlefield on the way home. This was a civil war battleground and reportedly one of the bloodiest engagements of the war. We had enough time to do the complete audio tour and visit all the battle sites before it closed for the evening. Unable to get ahold of my friend, we spent the night with Scott and Sarah again, enjoying homemade fajitas and playing Wii late into the night.
Tuesday we got an early start on the day because we again had some ambitious plans. On our way down from Louisville to Nashville we passed by Mammoth Cave National Park. I had been there once before with my grandparents when I was young and felt that a trip to Kentucky would not be complete without a stop. This, plus our complete avoidance of the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, convinced us that Kentucky deserved another shot. We arrived at Mammoth Cave to get on the first tour of the New Entrance Cave Tour. This tour was unique because it took you past some of the only stalactite and stalagmite structures in all of Mammoth Cave,
not to mention the Frozen Niagara. The tour was great and we got to see lots of cave life that we had never seen before in our other cave explorations; cave crickets, spiders, and snails. After Mammoth we headed north with intentions of visiting Maker's Mark Distillery. We called Mary again and she agreed to meet us there for the 3 p.m. tour. The tour was short but sweet and even gave us the opportunity to dip our hands in the fermenting mash. Like all good tours it ended in the gift shop where you get the chance to dip you own bottle of Maker's Mark in it's wax coating. If you don't want to do a bottle, you can have the staff dip almost anything you buy in the gift shop for you. Mary chose to buy a coffee mug and we watched as the sales clerk dipped it and the wax gradually flowed down its sides creating a perfect formation. Afterwards we went back to Mary's house to wait out the rush hour traffic before heading downtown for dinner. This time my wish was granted and we got to eat at the Bluegrass Brewing Company in the heart of downtown Louisville. After a great dinner and a couple rounds of beer we headed back to Mary's for an early night, again hoping to make the most of the following day.
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