Wednesday, August 4 - Shepherdsville, KY
I don't know about anyone else, but I can't remember a time in my life when the weather was this hot for this long! We arrived in the Louisville area on Monday, July 19th and the temperature was in the 90's. It stayed there all week, and when we left the area on the following Monday and headed to Alabama, the temperature was still in the 90's. In Alabama, same thing - 90's every day we were there! Since we left Alabama and went to Nashville, then on to Louisville again, the temperature has remained in the 90's. Well, I am happy to say that today we finally got out of the 90's - today's high hit 102 degrees! Yippee!! Add to that the fact that the dew point has been in the 70's, that takes the Heat Index up to about 110 every day. We have not been able to sit outside the motorhome at any time since we left Massachusetts on July 17th.
On a happier note, our parts for the motorhome came in today, and we will be at the repair facility tomorrow AM by 8 to have them installed. With luck, we will be on the road headed home by noon. Barring any unforseen problems after that, we should be pulling in to the driveway sometime on Saturday. We had planned to stop in Pennsylvania to check out the show venue we will be working in September, but we may just decide not to do that. If we do decide to stop, weather permitting heat-wise, we will not make it home until Sunday.
Today it was so hot that we decided not to do any sightseeing or distillery touring. Instead, we went SHOPPING, where it was cool, at least! We stopped at the local Michael's and TJMAXX/Home Goods stores and spent time in the coolness. Yes, we have A/C in the motorhome, but in this heat, the coach only cools down to about 78, but it gets warmer around 4 - 5PM, when it is hottest outside. At the present time, 8:15PM, it is 95 outside and 77.5 inside. As soon as the sun goes down completely, it will cool off enough to sleep comfortably. The roof A/C units (2) have been running constantly since we left on July 17th! Bet they can't wait for this heat to subside, so that they can get some rest!
OK, I've only had one reader comment on last night's little test question regarding the label on our bottle of Maker's Mark #46 (or any bottle of Maker's Mark, for that matter). Here's another hint to help you out: look particularly at the spelling of the words! You'll have to read last nights post to be able to look at the label (unless, of course, you happen to have a bottle handy). Leave your comments at the end of last night's blog, or send me an e-mail with your answer (if you have one).
One last thing before I sign off - we spoke to Steve and Sherry Metz, The DIP Kids, earlier this evening. They are here in Louisville, believe it or not, and we are hoping to get together with them tomorrow morning before we leave the area. They are here for the National Street Rod Show, which is being held at the Kentucky Fair and Exposition, where our show was held two weeks ago. In case you don't know, Steve and Sherry are the couple who is responsible for teaching us the "DIP" business! We are very excited to see them, it's been almost a year since the last time we got together with them!
Check back soon for a report on whether or not we got to see them. Not sure if I will post tomorrow night. I may just wait until we get home. But be sure to check back often. Seems that I've been posting a lot more lately. Guess I'm on a roll, eh?
OK, I'm outta here!
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Another Day in Louisville
Shepherdsville, KY - Tuesday, August 3
This morning, as I was walking the dogs, I noticed that the whole herd of donkeys, etc., was grazing by the fence closest to us at the campground. Of course, Beasley was barking at them the whole time we were out there
. I brought the dogs back to the motorhome and got the camera and Kathy. We went back out by the pasture to see if we could get any good pictures of the animals before the ventured back to the middle of the pasture. The link to these pictures appears, below.
http://picasaweb.google.com/cbenoitiii/GrandmaSFarmAnimals?feat=directlink
After photographing the animals, we checked with the Cummins dealer, where we are going to have the final repairs done on the motorhome, so see if the parts from Tiffin had come in. They had not, so we decided to do a bit of sightseeing along the Kentucky Bourbon Trail. This is the highway where 6 bourbon distillers are located. Because we got a late start this afternoon, we only got to tour one distillery, so we chose to visit the Maker's Mark Distillery , which is located in Loretto, KY. The other distillers include: Heaven Hill, Jim Beam, Four Roses, Wild Turkey, and Woodford Reserve. These can all be found along, or not far off of, Route 245.
Our tour of Maker's Mark was very interesting and informative. This distillery only uses the barrels the bourbon is aged in ONE TIME! They are then sold to a company in Scotland. Another fact we learned about Maker's Mark is that each bottle is hand-dipped into RED wax heated to 360 degrees to seal the bottles. The reason for this goes back to when the Samuels family began to produce bourbon in the 1800's. Mrs. Samuels was very fond of French Cognac, and those bottles all bore a wax seal. In addition, when you see Maker's Mark on the shelf, the bottles resemble French Cognac bottles in shape. Another fact we learned is that all the employees in the bottling plant of the distillery switch jobs every half-hour.
Our tour ended in the tasting room, where we got to try two samples, one of each variety of bourbon, Standard and #46. The "Standard" version is 90 proof, while the "#46" version is 94 proof. We liked the "#46" version, so we purchased a bottle at the store counter. We have not opened it yet, but I fear that it will get opened before this night is over!!! I only hope that we have some left when we get home, so we can offer some to whomever would like to try it..
OK, here's the test to see of you might be worthy of sampling this bourbon. I have included a picture of the bottle of #46 we purchased. I would like you to study the picture and let me know, either by commenting on the blog, or via e-mail, the ONE SIGNIFICANT and DISTINCTIVE feature of Maker's Mark. Hint: study the label very closely! On second thought, maybe the print is too small to read, so I'll just say, if you happen to see a bottle of Maker's Mark somewhere, study THAT label - they all have the same distinctive feature. Also, notice the RED wax and how if hardens on the bottle. That's why no two bottles of Maker's Mark are the same, because of the wax.
http://picasaweb.google.com/cbenoitiii/TheKentuckyBourbonTrail?feat=directlink
This morning, as I was walking the dogs, I noticed that the whole herd of donkeys, etc., was grazing by the fence closest to us at the campground. Of course, Beasley was barking at them the whole time we were out there
. I brought the dogs back to the motorhome and got the camera and Kathy. We went back out by the pasture to see if we could get any good pictures of the animals before the ventured back to the middle of the pasture. The link to these pictures appears, below.http://picasaweb.google.com/cbenoitiii/GrandmaSFarmAnimals?feat=directlink
After photographing the animals, we checked with the Cummins dealer, where we are going to have the final repairs done on the motorhome, so see if the parts from Tiffin had come in. They had not, so we decided to do a bit of sightseeing along the Kentucky Bourbon Trail. This is the highway where 6 bourbon distillers are located. Because we got a late start this afternoon, we only got to tour one distillery, so we chose to visit the Maker's Mark Distillery , which is located in Loretto, KY. The other distillers include: Heaven Hill, Jim Beam, Four Roses, Wild Turkey, and Woodford Reserve. These can all be found along, or not far off of, Route 245.
Our tour of Maker's Mark was very interesting and informative. This distillery only uses the barrels the bourbon is aged in ONE TIME! They are then sold to a company in Scotland. Another fact we learned about Maker's Mark is that each bottle is hand-dipped into RED wax heated to 360 degrees to seal the bottles. The reason for this goes back to when the Samuels family began to produce bourbon in the 1800's. Mrs. Samuels was very fond of French Cognac, and those bottles all bore a wax seal. In addition, when you see Maker's Mark on the shelf, the bottles resemble French Cognac bottles in shape. Another fact we learned is that all the employees in the bottling plant of the distillery switch jobs every half-hour.
Our tour ended in the tasting room, where we got to try two samples, one of each variety of bourbon, Standard and #46. The "Standard" version is 90 proof, while the "#46" version is 94 proof. We liked the "#46" version, so we purchased a bottle at the store counter. We have not opened it yet, but I fear that it will get opened before this night is over!!! I only hope that we have some left when we get home, so we can offer some to whomever would like to try it..
OK, here's the test to see of you might be worthy of sampling this bourbon. I have included a picture of the bottle of #46 we purchased. I would like you to study the picture and let me know, either by commenting on the blog, or via e-mail, the ONE SIGNIFICANT and DISTINCTIVE feature of Maker's Mark. Hint: study the label very closely! On second thought, maybe the print is too small to read, so I'll just say, if you happen to see a bottle of Maker's Mark somewhere, study THAT label - they all have the same distinctive feature. Also, notice the RED wax and how if hardens on the bottle. That's why no two bottles of Maker's Mark are the same, because of the wax.
http://picasaweb.google.com/cbenoitiii/TheKentuckyBourbonTrail?feat=directlink
Monday, August 2, 2010
Nashville, TN and Louisville, KY
Monday, August 2 - Shepherdsville, KY
AS promised in my last post, here is the report on Nashville and Louisville.
NASHVILLE: We just chilled on Friday night after we arrived at the campgound, which is approximately 15 miles north of the city, just off of I-65. We awoke early on Saturday morning and went to breakfast at a little "homey" place which we found last year, on the last day of our trip here. We liked it so much that we promised to visit again if we ever got back to the Nashville area. So, we arrived at the restaurant, Mason's is the name, and we noticed that the parking lot was full already. We were about to turn around when I spotted a space off to the side. After parking, we entered the restaurant and immediately saw that it was FULL! The waitress asked us if we would be interesed in sitting at their "family table", which had two empty seats. We agreed, and were seated. Long story short, we got to talking to the men seated at this table (there were no women sitting at the table, so Kathy was the only female), and got some valuable information about where to go in Nashville to see great acts. One gentleman we spoke with was actually a performer, a Country Music singer! His name is Grant Randolph, and he was very interesting to talk to. We had mentioned in conversation that this was the 2nd consecutive year we spend our wedding anniversary in Nashville, so before he left, he went out to his car and came back with a copy of his latest CD for us as a gift. One of the songs on his CD was written for him by the great Vince Gill, who is a Legend here in Nashville, and Country Music in general!
After breakfast, which was great, as usual!, we went into the city and visited the Country Music Hall of Fame. We missed this the last time we were here because we got there just before closing, so we made sure we got there early enough to go through the museum. This was a great take and we got some good pictures. I hope you excuse us if there are duplicates, but we used two cameras, so that I could shoot pictures with the "older" camera, which has fewer pixels, so the pictures are smaller than those taken with Kathy's camera and easier to upload with a "slow" connection. We have WiFi here in the campground, so..... Speaking of pictures, if you have not seen photos of the devastating floods which hit Nashville last spring, click on this link: Nashville Flood Photos
After visiting the Hall of Fame, we drove around the city to see what we could see - it was just too hot to be walking around outside, with temps in the high 90's and the Heat Index at 108. We ended our day in Nashville with a nice dinner at Demo's, which is a great Steak and Spaghetti restaurant we visited last year and loved!
LOUISVILLE: We left Nashville on Sunday morning heading up to the Louisville area, to the campground we are curently staying in, in Shepherdsville, KY. After getting settled, we drove into the city to do some sightseeing. The first place we visited was the Louisville Slugger Bat Factory and Museum. This was a great take, and we truly enjoyed the tour of the factory. The factory is in operation 7 days per week and it turns out an unbelievable 1.8 million, yes, I said "MILLION", bats each year! Only a fraction of that number, about 88,000 bats go to players in the Majors and Minors. The rest of the bats are made for Retail Sales to sporting goods outlets, or are "Specialized" souvenir, or commemorative bats. They also make special PINK bats, which are used by most of the Major League teams on Mother's Day! One factoid I was not aware of is that bats are made of either white ash, or maple wood. Barry Bonds switched to a maple bat at the end of his career. To distinguish between the two, look at the label on the bat - on white as, the label is "burned" into the bat, like a "brand" on cattle. The Maple bat has a mylar label affixed to it because the wood is too soft to burn the label. Also, the label on the maple bat has a large "M" on it, to denote that it is MAPLE. All in all, this is one place that I would recommend to all lovers of baseball! The history here in the museum is "awesome".
After leaving the bat factory with our souvenir miniature bats, we drove down to the Churchill Downs Museum and Race Track. Again, we tried to visit here last year, but we were "rained out" (see "The Most Terrifying Day of Our Lives" from July of 2009). The tour of Churchill Downs is fascinating, but I, for one, couldn't wait to get out of the hot sun. This tour takes us outside for the whole tour, and it was soooo hot, I swear you could fry an egg on the pavement! If you visit Churchill Downs, be sure to take this tour, but do it on a cool day!! Anyway, the history here is as interesting as the history at the bat factory. There are dozens of barns, or stables, located out behind the track itself. During the racing season, these barns house thousands of horses. When we were there, there were only about 900 horses in the barns. We did not take the tour of the barns - not enough time. This is another "must see" in Louisville, if you should ever visit here.
Here are the album links. As I said, there may be duplicate pictures because we used two different cameras.
http://picasaweb.google.com/cbenoitiii/CountryMusicHallOfFameNashville?feat=directlink
http://picasaweb.google.com/cbenoitiii/CountryMusicHallOfFameNashville2?feat=directlink
http://picasaweb.google.com/cbenoitiii/AtTheLouisvilleSluggerFactory?feat=directlink
http://picasaweb.google.com/cbenoitiii/AtChurchillDowns?feat=directlink
http://picasaweb.google.com/cbenoitiii/ADayInLouisvilleKY?feat=directlink
AS promised in my last post, here is the report on Nashville and Louisville.
NASHVILLE: We just chilled on Friday night after we arrived at the campgound, which is approximately 15 miles north of the city, just off of I-65. We awoke early on Saturday morning and went to breakfast at a little "homey" place which we found last year, on the last day of our trip here. We liked it so much that we promised to visit again if we ever got back to the Nashville area. So, we arrived at the restaurant, Mason's is the name, and we noticed that the parking lot was full already. We were about to turn around when I spotted a space off to the side. After parking, we entered the restaurant and immediately saw that it was FULL! The waitress asked us if we would be interesed in sitting at their "family table", which had two empty seats. We agreed, and were seated. Long story short, we got to talking to the men seated at this table (there were no women sitting at the table, so Kathy was the only female), and got some valuable information about where to go in Nashville to see great acts. One gentleman we spoke with was actually a performer, a Country Music singer! His name is Grant Randolph, and he was very interesting to talk to. We had mentioned in conversation that this was the 2nd consecutive year we spend our wedding anniversary in Nashville, so before he left, he went out to his car and came back with a copy of his latest CD for us as a gift. One of the songs on his CD was written for him by the great Vince Gill, who is a Legend here in Nashville, and Country Music in general!
After breakfast, which was great, as usual!, we went into the city and visited the Country Music Hall of Fame. We missed this the last time we were here because we got there just before closing, so we made sure we got there early enough to go through the museum. This was a great take and we got some good pictures. I hope you excuse us if there are duplicates, but we used two cameras, so that I could shoot pictures with the "older" camera, which has fewer pixels, so the pictures are smaller than those taken with Kathy's camera and easier to upload with a "slow" connection. We have WiFi here in the campground, so..... Speaking of pictures, if you have not seen photos of the devastating floods which hit Nashville last spring, click on this link: Nashville Flood Photos
After visiting the Hall of Fame, we drove around the city to see what we could see - it was just too hot to be walking around outside, with temps in the high 90's and the Heat Index at 108. We ended our day in Nashville with a nice dinner at Demo's, which is a great Steak and Spaghetti restaurant we visited last year and loved!
LOUISVILLE: We left Nashville on Sunday morning heading up to the Louisville area, to the campground we are curently staying in, in Shepherdsville, KY. After getting settled, we drove into the city to do some sightseeing. The first place we visited was the Louisville Slugger Bat Factory and Museum. This was a great take, and we truly enjoyed the tour of the factory. The factory is in operation 7 days per week and it turns out an unbelievable 1.8 million, yes, I said "MILLION", bats each year! Only a fraction of that number, about 88,000 bats go to players in the Majors and Minors. The rest of the bats are made for Retail Sales to sporting goods outlets, or are "Specialized" souvenir, or commemorative bats. They also make special PINK bats, which are used by most of the Major League teams on Mother's Day! One factoid I was not aware of is that bats are made of either white ash, or maple wood. Barry Bonds switched to a maple bat at the end of his career. To distinguish between the two, look at the label on the bat - on white as, the label is "burned" into the bat, like a "brand" on cattle. The Maple bat has a mylar label affixed to it because the wood is too soft to burn the label. Also, the label on the maple bat has a large "M" on it, to denote that it is MAPLE. All in all, this is one place that I would recommend to all lovers of baseball! The history here in the museum is "awesome".
After leaving the bat factory with our souvenir miniature bats, we drove down to the Churchill Downs Museum and Race Track. Again, we tried to visit here last year, but we were "rained out" (see "The Most Terrifying Day of Our Lives" from July of 2009). The tour of Churchill Downs is fascinating, but I, for one, couldn't wait to get out of the hot sun. This tour takes us outside for the whole tour, and it was soooo hot, I swear you could fry an egg on the pavement! If you visit Churchill Downs, be sure to take this tour, but do it on a cool day!! Anyway, the history here is as interesting as the history at the bat factory. There are dozens of barns, or stables, located out behind the track itself. During the racing season, these barns house thousands of horses. When we were there, there were only about 900 horses in the barns. We did not take the tour of the barns - not enough time. This is another "must see" in Louisville, if you should ever visit here.
Here are the album links. As I said, there may be duplicate pictures because we used two different cameras.
http://picasaweb.google.com/cbenoitiii/CountryMusicHallOfFameNashville?feat=directlink
http://picasaweb.google.com/cbenoitiii/CountryMusicHallOfFameNashville2?feat=directlink
http://picasaweb.google.com/cbenoitiii/AtTheLouisvilleSluggerFactory?feat=directlink
http://picasaweb.google.com/cbenoitiii/AtChurchillDowns?feat=directlink
http://picasaweb.google.com/cbenoitiii/ADayInLouisvilleKY?feat=directlink
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