Day 10: Sunday April 30, 2023
After a great night’s sleep, we got up at a reasonable hour, got ready, and headed for breakfast. Breakfast was…fine. I was glad to not be paying full price for it, but definitely missed the days of only having to tip for breakfast at the Hilton Gardens
After breakfast, we went back to the room, packed up, and headed out. Check out was quick and the lady at the desk offered up the info that the breakfast credits had already been applied. Good! We packed up the car and hit the road.
By the time we hit I-80 (not that far outside of State College), it was raining, and we were in rain of various intensities until we were north of Hartford. It was a long day. We stopped just before I-81 for gas, hit a Jersey Mike’s for a late lunch off 84 in NY at the exit for Poughkeepsie, and then stopped again for gas just after crossing the river into NH. We finished the 479 mile drive from State College with enough time to get the car unloaded at home before the downpours reached NH. It was a long day. But thankfully all went smoothly.
Final thoughts:
We are not city people.
Despite not being city people, I liked how so much that is worth seeing in Louisville was on one street. It’s a fairly compact area, which made touring easy.
West Virginia and Kentucky are both beautiful states.
New River Gorge and Mammoth Cave National Parks are both very worth visiting. Make those cave tour reservations earlier than I did.
Bourbon Tour reservations need to be made early. Each distillery has their own timeframe when they open up reservations. Know them
Although you learn the same stuff on each tour, it’s worth it to take a tour at each distillery. Much better than just showing up to shop and find the hidden bar.
Driving southwest of the northeast corridor is so much more enjoyable than driving in the northeast corridor.
I liked this trip a lot more than I expected to!
I’m pretty proud of myself for successfully sampling as many bourbons as I did.
Next year’s travel will include another trip with a lot of driving, but not nearly the driving I did on this trip, and I’m grateful for that! But I really did enjoy this trip, and I’m also kinda proud of myself for the amount of driving I did (all of the 2476 miles) given what the week before the trip had looked like for me.
The more of this country that I see, the more I want to see!
Monday, May 29, 2023
April 2023: A National Parks and Bourbon Road Trip: Day 9
Day 9: Saturday April 29, 2023
After a pretty good night’s sleep, we got up slowly, eventually got ready, and had…the most lacking hotel breakfast of the trip downstairs. Seriously this one was pitiful. So breakfast was quick.
We got on the road shortly after 9. It was a very uneventful, but beautiful, drive through the mountains of West Virginia. We passed into Maryland eventually, where we grabbed lunch from a Chick-fil-A drive through just east of Cumberland. Chick-fil-A really should be tasked with managing well…everything. Their drive throughs are a thing of beauty in how efficiently they operate.
From here it was non-stop to State College, PA. We pulled into my sister’s driveway just about 2:15. Laura gave us a tour of her house, since she’s moved since the last time I was in State College, and then we piled into her car for a tour of Penn State, which, of course, started with ice cream at the Creamery. They have very good (and HUGE) servings here. Nick had never been to Penn State before, so Laura drove us around campus so he could see how big it is. Then we went back to her house and visited until Josh got home from work.
Once Josh was ready we all piled into Laura’s car and drove over to the next town: Bellefonte. Laura had been wanting to check out Axemann Brewery and having us in town apparently provided a great opportunity to do so. Axemann has a pretty unique set-up. They have a huge open indoor space, with lawn games, a bar, lots of tables, and a food window that’s got a kitchen shared by two food truck operators. We sat at the bar, the boys had some beers, the girls had some cocktails, and we got some pizzas. The food and cocktails were great. The beers apparently were not the world’s best. The atmosphere was VERY loud, but it was quite busy and it’s really a pretty cool set-up. They also have a big wall of upgraded garage doors that they can open in nice weather to have air flow and move some of the cornhole boards outside. Neat concept, and we enjoyed ourselves.
After dinner, Laura drove us over to Big Spring distillery, which was just a couple streets away. They actually make a lot of the (flavored) liquors that were used in the cocktails at Axemann. We grabbed a table here and each ordered a cocktail. We also were provided with samples of some dragonfruit cocktail. We had fun here too.
Once we’d finished our beverages, we headed back to Laura and Josh’s, where we chatted for a few more minutes, and then Nick and I hopped into the car for the quick 5 minute drive over to our hotel for the evening, the Hilton Garden Inn State College.
Check in was quick, the guy at the front desk explained how breakfast works now that gold members get a set value credit towards breakfast rather than a full free breakfast (thanks HHonors…) and we headed for our room, on the 4th floor, at the end of the hallway, facing the woods. The room was in great shape, clean, and had NO road noise. After a week of staying in cities and next to highways, no road noise was amazing. We both crashed hard and slept soundly.
After a pretty good night’s sleep, we got up slowly, eventually got ready, and had…the most lacking hotel breakfast of the trip downstairs. Seriously this one was pitiful. So breakfast was quick.
We got on the road shortly after 9. It was a very uneventful, but beautiful, drive through the mountains of West Virginia. We passed into Maryland eventually, where we grabbed lunch from a Chick-fil-A drive through just east of Cumberland. Chick-fil-A really should be tasked with managing well…everything. Their drive throughs are a thing of beauty in how efficiently they operate.
From here it was non-stop to State College, PA. We pulled into my sister’s driveway just about 2:15. Laura gave us a tour of her house, since she’s moved since the last time I was in State College, and then we piled into her car for a tour of Penn State, which, of course, started with ice cream at the Creamery. They have very good (and HUGE) servings here. Nick had never been to Penn State before, so Laura drove us around campus so he could see how big it is. Then we went back to her house and visited until Josh got home from work.
Once Josh was ready we all piled into Laura’s car and drove over to the next town: Bellefonte. Laura had been wanting to check out Axemann Brewery and having us in town apparently provided a great opportunity to do so. Axemann has a pretty unique set-up. They have a huge open indoor space, with lawn games, a bar, lots of tables, and a food window that’s got a kitchen shared by two food truck operators. We sat at the bar, the boys had some beers, the girls had some cocktails, and we got some pizzas. The food and cocktails were great. The beers apparently were not the world’s best. The atmosphere was VERY loud, but it was quite busy and it’s really a pretty cool set-up. They also have a big wall of upgraded garage doors that they can open in nice weather to have air flow and move some of the cornhole boards outside. Neat concept, and we enjoyed ourselves.
After dinner, Laura drove us over to Big Spring distillery, which was just a couple streets away. They actually make a lot of the (flavored) liquors that were used in the cocktails at Axemann. We grabbed a table here and each ordered a cocktail. We also were provided with samples of some dragonfruit cocktail. We had fun here too.
Once we’d finished our beverages, we headed back to Laura and Josh’s, where we chatted for a few more minutes, and then Nick and I hopped into the car for the quick 5 minute drive over to our hotel for the evening, the Hilton Garden Inn State College.
Check in was quick, the guy at the front desk explained how breakfast works now that gold members get a set value credit towards breakfast rather than a full free breakfast (thanks HHonors…) and we headed for our room, on the 4th floor, at the end of the hallway, facing the woods. The room was in great shape, clean, and had NO road noise. After a week of staying in cities and next to highways, no road noise was amazing. We both crashed hard and slept soundly.
April 2023: A National Parks and Bourbon Road Trip: Day 8
Day 8: Friday April 28, 2023
We both got up fairly early this morning and got ready for the day. Once we were ready enough, we headed for the hotel breakfast, having agreed that while it had been lackluster on Tuesday, this was going to be the most efficient way to get moving this morning.
Surprisingly, breakfast had an impressive amount of offerings this morning, so we had a pretty hearty breakfast before heading back up to the room to put the finishing touches on the packing. I made a trip out to the car to empty some trash out of the car and bring enough stuff down so that we could bring the rest down in one trip, and then we were ready for the real departure.
Check out was quick, we got the car fully packed up and we hit the road…south. Yes, you read that right. Today we’d be going south to go north.
Today we were headed for Bardstown the “Bourbon Capital of the World”. And given the amount of distilleries here, that seems accurate. Bardstown was less than an hour from our hotel in downtown Louisville, but like a totally different world. Somehow, despite the amount of distilleries in or within 10 miles of Bardstown, this really had a small town feel. Our first stop once we reached Bardstown was the Oscar Getz Museum of Whiskey History. This museum was a little museum, but VERY well done. It should be on the to-do list for those doing the Bourbon Trail.
After exploring the Oscar Getz Museum, we headed into town. What a cute town! Our next stop was lunch at the Old Talbott Tavern. Old Talbott Tavern boasts of having the oldest bourbon bar in the world. We had a decent meal here. I had a cocktail that involved bourbon, lemonade and honey. Nick had…some cocktail involving bourbon. He had their version of the Hot Brown and I had a pulled pork sandwich. It was a unique place.
After lunch we walked around town a bit. I think if we wanted to do another Bourbon Trail trip in the future, I’d stay in Bardstown. Like I said…really cute little town.
After walking around town, we headed for our next destination, Preservation Distillery. This had been the only distillery in Bardstown that I could get tour tickets for when I started booking tours. Book those distillery tours early. We had a great tour guide here too, and found that this company had more of a unique history than some of the others. The setting was beautiful. I also liked that here, when booking, I could get a designated driver ticket. I’d done MUCH better at sampling all the bourbons than I’d expected, but bourbon really isn’t my drink of choice. And I still had to drive 3+ hours whenever we were done in Bardstown. We enjoyed the tour here, and we enjoyed checking out the longhorn cattle here after the tour. Nick didn’t love the bourbon here, thankfully. Interestingly, the bourbon here was the most expensive of any of the distilleries we’d been to. It was also the most aged, and he’s not big on the older bourbons. They’re too flavorful or something.
Tour completed, we decided since we were in the area, to drive over to Heaven Hill Distillery. We were done with scheduled tours for the trip, but might as well take a look at the gift shop and such. We were blown away by how huge Heaven Hill is driving in.
Once we’d finished in the gift shop, we made one more distillery stop, just down the road from Heaven Hill, at Willet Distillery. We didn’t buy anything here. Their gift shop was pretty minimal. It was a really pretty setting here though.
Now it was really time to get moving. We programmed the GPS for our next hotel, and got on the road. Minus a bit of rain as we got close, it was a pretty uneventful drive to the Hampton Inn in Charleston, WV. We stopped for dinner shortly before there at…Chick-fil-A and had another quick, tasty meal.
It was raining pretty hard when we reached the Hampton Inn, so we unloaded what we needed for the night under the entrance awning and then I parked the car. My Rav-4 has one of those cargo covers, and it is the best thing ever for road trips. Check in was quick and very friendly, and we headed up to our room. We were on a points stay here, but had been upgraded, and we found a fairly recently renovated room. We also found that this Hampton Inn was still using the acute pandemic era room seals on the doors. Needless to say our room was VERY clean and in great condition, despite the hotel itself being an older Hampton Inn.
We both crashed soon after getting to the hotel. I was pleasantly surprised to find that, despite the hotel being literally across the street from the end of the off ramp from the highway, the room was actually fairly quiet, and I think we both got a good night’s sleep.
We both got up fairly early this morning and got ready for the day. Once we were ready enough, we headed for the hotel breakfast, having agreed that while it had been lackluster on Tuesday, this was going to be the most efficient way to get moving this morning.
Surprisingly, breakfast had an impressive amount of offerings this morning, so we had a pretty hearty breakfast before heading back up to the room to put the finishing touches on the packing. I made a trip out to the car to empty some trash out of the car and bring enough stuff down so that we could bring the rest down in one trip, and then we were ready for the real departure.
Check out was quick, we got the car fully packed up and we hit the road…south. Yes, you read that right. Today we’d be going south to go north.
Today we were headed for Bardstown the “Bourbon Capital of the World”. And given the amount of distilleries here, that seems accurate. Bardstown was less than an hour from our hotel in downtown Louisville, but like a totally different world. Somehow, despite the amount of distilleries in or within 10 miles of Bardstown, this really had a small town feel. Our first stop once we reached Bardstown was the Oscar Getz Museum of Whiskey History. This museum was a little museum, but VERY well done. It should be on the to-do list for those doing the Bourbon Trail.
After exploring the Oscar Getz Museum, we headed into town. What a cute town! Our next stop was lunch at the Old Talbott Tavern. Old Talbott Tavern boasts of having the oldest bourbon bar in the world. We had a decent meal here. I had a cocktail that involved bourbon, lemonade and honey. Nick had…some cocktail involving bourbon. He had their version of the Hot Brown and I had a pulled pork sandwich. It was a unique place.
After lunch we walked around town a bit. I think if we wanted to do another Bourbon Trail trip in the future, I’d stay in Bardstown. Like I said…really cute little town.
After walking around town, we headed for our next destination, Preservation Distillery. This had been the only distillery in Bardstown that I could get tour tickets for when I started booking tours. Book those distillery tours early. We had a great tour guide here too, and found that this company had more of a unique history than some of the others. The setting was beautiful. I also liked that here, when booking, I could get a designated driver ticket. I’d done MUCH better at sampling all the bourbons than I’d expected, but bourbon really isn’t my drink of choice. And I still had to drive 3+ hours whenever we were done in Bardstown. We enjoyed the tour here, and we enjoyed checking out the longhorn cattle here after the tour. Nick didn’t love the bourbon here, thankfully. Interestingly, the bourbon here was the most expensive of any of the distilleries we’d been to. It was also the most aged, and he’s not big on the older bourbons. They’re too flavorful or something.
Tour completed, we decided since we were in the area, to drive over to Heaven Hill Distillery. We were done with scheduled tours for the trip, but might as well take a look at the gift shop and such. We were blown away by how huge Heaven Hill is driving in.
Once we’d finished in the gift shop, we made one more distillery stop, just down the road from Heaven Hill, at Willet Distillery. We didn’t buy anything here. Their gift shop was pretty minimal. It was a really pretty setting here though.
Now it was really time to get moving. We programmed the GPS for our next hotel, and got on the road. Minus a bit of rain as we got close, it was a pretty uneventful drive to the Hampton Inn in Charleston, WV. We stopped for dinner shortly before there at…Chick-fil-A and had another quick, tasty meal.
It was raining pretty hard when we reached the Hampton Inn, so we unloaded what we needed for the night under the entrance awning and then I parked the car. My Rav-4 has one of those cargo covers, and it is the best thing ever for road trips. Check in was quick and very friendly, and we headed up to our room. We were on a points stay here, but had been upgraded, and we found a fairly recently renovated room. We also found that this Hampton Inn was still using the acute pandemic era room seals on the doors. Needless to say our room was VERY clean and in great condition, despite the hotel itself being an older Hampton Inn.
We both crashed soon after getting to the hotel. I was pleasantly surprised to find that, despite the hotel being literally across the street from the end of the off ramp from the highway, the room was actually fairly quiet, and I think we both got a good night’s sleep.
April 2023: A National Parks and Bourbon Road Trip: Day 7
Day 7: Thursday April 27, 2023
We were both awake early today. We were on a schedule both this morning and this afternoon, so we headed for breakfast early. It was a pretty short walk to Wild Eggs for breakfast, where we were seated almost immediately. As was the trend in Louisville (and everywhere, let’s be real), their serving team was very understaffed, but boy were they hustling. Breakfast here was great. As usual, I don’t remember what Nick ate. We both had their house made lemonade. I had the giant cinnamon roll that comes smothered in vanilla sauce. We would happily eat here again too.
After breakfast, we headed back to the hotel briefly and then we walked back down Main Street for our first tour of the day. This one surprisingly had nothing to do with alcohol. While neither of us are baseball fans, we do find it interesting to see where things are made, so it was time to check out the Louisville Slugger Factory.
This was a great tour. It was kind of unique in that we had a tour guide, but each stop on the tour had a video clip and then the tour guide answered questions, gave additional info, related the video to what we were seeing in front of us, etc. Regardless of how the tour was structured, Louisville Slugger is an impressive company, and we both enjoyed the tour a lot. Go here, even if you’re not a baseball fan.
After receiving our complimentary mini (18” long and thin) Louisville Sluggers as a reward for completing the tour, we headed across the street to Art Eatables. Art Eatables is a candy store that we’d spotted on our way to the Frazier Museum the day before and then we had discovered on our tour later in the day that they provide the chocolate pairings for the Angel’s Envy tour. So, we decided we needed to check out the store. We had a lot of fun in here, both leaving with a bag full of chocolates, many of which involved alcohol, and all of which have proven to be delicious as we’ve sampled our way through them in the last month. This should be another stop for Louisville visitors for sure.
Chocolate purchased, we began deciding what to do. I had not done a great job of timing our tours today. It was still too early for lunch (and we weren’t hungry after our big breakfast) and our next tour wasn’t until 1:30. So we headed for the hotel. Nick napped. Eventually we had a bit of a snack (leftover pizza for Nick, a Nature Valley sandwich for me) and then we headed back to Main Street.
Our final tour in Louisville was at Evan Williams. Our tour guide was Bob, who was originally from New England. He had a great sense of humor and appeared to love both his job and being able to joke about NH liquor stores with us during the tour. The Evan Williams Experience was completely different from Angel’s Envy. Evan Williams is the oldest distillery on Whiskey Row, but most of their whiskey is made out in Bardstown, at Heaven Hill, which they are part of. They bottle just a small amount of whiskey in Louisville. The tour here was a Disney level production, complete with a tasting room themed to the early 1900s. It was also a great experience.
Tour and tasting finished, we hit the gift shop and then headed back to the hotel to chill for a bit before dinner. Yes, we logged a lot of miles walking back and forth to the hotel today!
Tonight the forecast was for rain, so I had very intentionally saved the dinner it made the most sense to Uber/Lyft to for this evening. When we were ready to go, I requested a Lyft (3 Hilton Honor points per dollar and 10 Chase Ultimate Rewards Points per dollar for going Lyft instead of Uber..no brainer) and minutes later, our driver arrived. It was a pretty quick drive to the Brown Hotel, where we fairly easily found the Lobby Bar. The hostess seated us in a back room, making me wonder if we a) had done things right and b) weren’t elite enough to be in the main lobby bar, but we had a great experience overall.
The Brown Hotel is a historic hotel in Louisville and is where the Hot Brown originated. The Hot Brown is the dish of Louisville. It’s an open face turkey sandwich with some ham thrown in there for good measure, and then smothered in a cheesy gravy. Following dad’s directions, we ordered one to split, along with an order of the bourbon barrel fries. I had the Lily to drink (x2). Nick had some bourbon based drink. Dinner was delicious, our surroundings were beautiful, and service was excellent.
Dinner finished, we requested another Lyft, and we were back at our hotel soon after. By now it was raining hard, so I was very glad we had planned dinner the way we (I did). I was also glad we’d gotten way less rain this week than originally forecast!
Back at the hotel, we got serious about packing so that we could head out earlyish the next morning. Tomorrow we would begin the trek north, but we still had more touristing to squeeze into the trip before we truly headed north.
We were both awake early today. We were on a schedule both this morning and this afternoon, so we headed for breakfast early. It was a pretty short walk to Wild Eggs for breakfast, where we were seated almost immediately. As was the trend in Louisville (and everywhere, let’s be real), their serving team was very understaffed, but boy were they hustling. Breakfast here was great. As usual, I don’t remember what Nick ate. We both had their house made lemonade. I had the giant cinnamon roll that comes smothered in vanilla sauce. We would happily eat here again too.
After breakfast, we headed back to the hotel briefly and then we walked back down Main Street for our first tour of the day. This one surprisingly had nothing to do with alcohol. While neither of us are baseball fans, we do find it interesting to see where things are made, so it was time to check out the Louisville Slugger Factory.
This was a great tour. It was kind of unique in that we had a tour guide, but each stop on the tour had a video clip and then the tour guide answered questions, gave additional info, related the video to what we were seeing in front of us, etc. Regardless of how the tour was structured, Louisville Slugger is an impressive company, and we both enjoyed the tour a lot. Go here, even if you’re not a baseball fan.
After receiving our complimentary mini (18” long and thin) Louisville Sluggers as a reward for completing the tour, we headed across the street to Art Eatables. Art Eatables is a candy store that we’d spotted on our way to the Frazier Museum the day before and then we had discovered on our tour later in the day that they provide the chocolate pairings for the Angel’s Envy tour. So, we decided we needed to check out the store. We had a lot of fun in here, both leaving with a bag full of chocolates, many of which involved alcohol, and all of which have proven to be delicious as we’ve sampled our way through them in the last month. This should be another stop for Louisville visitors for sure.
Chocolate purchased, we began deciding what to do. I had not done a great job of timing our tours today. It was still too early for lunch (and we weren’t hungry after our big breakfast) and our next tour wasn’t until 1:30. So we headed for the hotel. Nick napped. Eventually we had a bit of a snack (leftover pizza for Nick, a Nature Valley sandwich for me) and then we headed back to Main Street.
Our final tour in Louisville was at Evan Williams. Our tour guide was Bob, who was originally from New England. He had a great sense of humor and appeared to love both his job and being able to joke about NH liquor stores with us during the tour. The Evan Williams Experience was completely different from Angel’s Envy. Evan Williams is the oldest distillery on Whiskey Row, but most of their whiskey is made out in Bardstown, at Heaven Hill, which they are part of. They bottle just a small amount of whiskey in Louisville. The tour here was a Disney level production, complete with a tasting room themed to the early 1900s. It was also a great experience.
Tour and tasting finished, we hit the gift shop and then headed back to the hotel to chill for a bit before dinner. Yes, we logged a lot of miles walking back and forth to the hotel today!
Tonight the forecast was for rain, so I had very intentionally saved the dinner it made the most sense to Uber/Lyft to for this evening. When we were ready to go, I requested a Lyft (3 Hilton Honor points per dollar and 10 Chase Ultimate Rewards Points per dollar for going Lyft instead of Uber..no brainer) and minutes later, our driver arrived. It was a pretty quick drive to the Brown Hotel, where we fairly easily found the Lobby Bar. The hostess seated us in a back room, making me wonder if we a) had done things right and b) weren’t elite enough to be in the main lobby bar, but we had a great experience overall.
The Brown Hotel is a historic hotel in Louisville and is where the Hot Brown originated. The Hot Brown is the dish of Louisville. It’s an open face turkey sandwich with some ham thrown in there for good measure, and then smothered in a cheesy gravy. Following dad’s directions, we ordered one to split, along with an order of the bourbon barrel fries. I had the Lily to drink (x2). Nick had some bourbon based drink. Dinner was delicious, our surroundings were beautiful, and service was excellent.
Dinner finished, we requested another Lyft, and we were back at our hotel soon after. By now it was raining hard, so I was very glad we had planned dinner the way we (I did). I was also glad we’d gotten way less rain this week than originally forecast!
Back at the hotel, we got serious about packing so that we could head out earlyish the next morning. Tomorrow we would begin the trek north, but we still had more touristing to squeeze into the trip before we truly headed north.
April 2023: A National Parks and Bourbon Road Trip: Day 6
Day 6: Wednesday April 26, 2023
Having crashed early the night before, I was awake early this morning…like before the alarm I’d forgotten to turn off went off. I facebooked for a bit then got ready for the day. As soon as I started moving around, it became evident that yesterday’s cave tour had aggravated the cough, so pretty soon Nick was awake too.
Eventually we were both ready for the day and it had reached a time that made sense to leave for breakfast, so we headed for Main Street. Pretty soon we were back at Doc Crow’s.
Breakfast here was great! Service was a bit slow because they only had one server on, but she was phenomenal. The food was excellent. I had a breakfast sandwich on a biscuit and Nick probably had biscuits and gravy. I would happily eat breakfast here again. And because we were kicking off the no driving portion of the trip, we started the day with grown up beverages too.
Once we’d eaten breakfast, we headed further down Main Street. It was time to really explore Louisville. First stop? The Frazier Museum. This museum has a little bit of everything. It’s the start of the Bourbon Trail, so there’s quite a bit about that, it’s right next to the river that was part of the start of the Louis and Clark expedition, so there’s stuff about that, and plenty of other things about Kentucky mixed in too. I had snagged a groupon for here, so I think it cost $11 each to get in. It was well worth it, even if we did encounter a field trip. If you’re in Louisville, definitely make it a point to check out the Frazier Museum..jpg)
After exploring the museum, we headed a bit further down this section of Main Street to Peerless Distillery. This was a very quick and very boring stop. They didn’t even have good merchandise and all of their bourbon was locked up.
By now it was time to start to figure out lunch. Dad had recommended a bar at the Galt House, so we decided to head there. We ended up at the Jockey Silks bar which is not the one he had recommended, but the food and beverages were very good, and the service was very good considering how understaffed they were, albeit a bit slow. I had some sort of chicken flatbread and a drink involving fruit juices and aperol. Nick had an old fashioned and..food.
Lunch consumed, we quickly detoured back to the hotel to drop off the shopping we’d done at the Frazier Museum gift shop, and then headed back to Main Street for our next distillery tour. It was a relatively short walk to Angel’s Envy from our hotel. Shortly before we reached Angel’s Envy, we passed the bank where the shooting had occurred a week or two earlier. Nick, who is big on self-defense, a firearms enthusiast, a former security guy, and the spouse of an educator, immediately began commenting on the lack of sightlines that the folks inside the bank had had and started asking me questions about sightlines at the schools I work in. I was glad when we reached the distillery!
Our tour at Angel’s Envy was great! Lyric was a great tour guide. Angel’s is one of the newer additions to Whiskey Row in Louisville, but has made a big name for itself. It’s one of Nick’s favorites, so a tour here was a must do. The tasting at the end had us fancy-like. It was the real deal: swirl the glass, look at colors, sniff the bourbon, etc. We tasted two bourbons, plus we sampled the first bourbon a second time with ice in it to learn about how water smooths out bourbon. Each bourbon was paired with a chocolate. The tasting alone was worth the admission for the tour, but really the whole experience was great.
Tour and tasting finished, we hit the gift shop, and then headed back to the hotel. We debated what to do about dinner and eventually it was decided to doordash pizza for dinner tonight. I have no idea where Nick ordered from, but we had a delicious cheese pizza in our hotel room for dinner.
After dinner we briefly considered going out for beverages, but in the end decided to just call it an early night. I think we both crashed early this evening.
Having crashed early the night before, I was awake early this morning…like before the alarm I’d forgotten to turn off went off. I facebooked for a bit then got ready for the day. As soon as I started moving around, it became evident that yesterday’s cave tour had aggravated the cough, so pretty soon Nick was awake too.
Eventually we were both ready for the day and it had reached a time that made sense to leave for breakfast, so we headed for Main Street. Pretty soon we were back at Doc Crow’s.
Breakfast here was great! Service was a bit slow because they only had one server on, but she was phenomenal. The food was excellent. I had a breakfast sandwich on a biscuit and Nick probably had biscuits and gravy. I would happily eat breakfast here again. And because we were kicking off the no driving portion of the trip, we started the day with grown up beverages too.
Once we’d eaten breakfast, we headed further down Main Street. It was time to really explore Louisville. First stop? The Frazier Museum. This museum has a little bit of everything. It’s the start of the Bourbon Trail, so there’s quite a bit about that, it’s right next to the river that was part of the start of the Louis and Clark expedition, so there’s stuff about that, and plenty of other things about Kentucky mixed in too. I had snagged a groupon for here, so I think it cost $11 each to get in. It was well worth it, even if we did encounter a field trip. If you’re in Louisville, definitely make it a point to check out the Frazier Museum.
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After exploring the museum, we headed a bit further down this section of Main Street to Peerless Distillery. This was a very quick and very boring stop. They didn’t even have good merchandise and all of their bourbon was locked up.
By now it was time to start to figure out lunch. Dad had recommended a bar at the Galt House, so we decided to head there. We ended up at the Jockey Silks bar which is not the one he had recommended, but the food and beverages were very good, and the service was very good considering how understaffed they were, albeit a bit slow. I had some sort of chicken flatbread and a drink involving fruit juices and aperol. Nick had an old fashioned and..food.
Lunch consumed, we quickly detoured back to the hotel to drop off the shopping we’d done at the Frazier Museum gift shop, and then headed back to Main Street for our next distillery tour. It was a relatively short walk to Angel’s Envy from our hotel. Shortly before we reached Angel’s Envy, we passed the bank where the shooting had occurred a week or two earlier. Nick, who is big on self-defense, a firearms enthusiast, a former security guy, and the spouse of an educator, immediately began commenting on the lack of sightlines that the folks inside the bank had had and started asking me questions about sightlines at the schools I work in. I was glad when we reached the distillery!
Our tour at Angel’s Envy was great! Lyric was a great tour guide. Angel’s is one of the newer additions to Whiskey Row in Louisville, but has made a big name for itself. It’s one of Nick’s favorites, so a tour here was a must do. The tasting at the end had us fancy-like. It was the real deal: swirl the glass, look at colors, sniff the bourbon, etc. We tasted two bourbons, plus we sampled the first bourbon a second time with ice in it to learn about how water smooths out bourbon. Each bourbon was paired with a chocolate. The tasting alone was worth the admission for the tour, but really the whole experience was great.
Tour and tasting finished, we hit the gift shop, and then headed back to the hotel. We debated what to do about dinner and eventually it was decided to doordash pizza for dinner tonight. I have no idea where Nick ordered from, but we had a delicious cheese pizza in our hotel room for dinner.
After dinner we briefly considered going out for beverages, but in the end decided to just call it an early night. I think we both crashed early this evening.
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