In Reverse...

Well, although it pains my between the lines, everything in order, all in good time, engineering mind, I am going to talk about the return home journey first.  Don’t get dizzy.  There are plenty of things to go over while we visited the FOJ’s but they will take a bit more time.  And I am not sure when you will read this so hope to fill in some blanks every other day or so.

I do enjoy traveling in winter, you can see “stuff” along the road without peering through leaves on the trees. 

Somehow the muted tones of winter fit the scenery, and reminders of the past. 

Leaving Cape Girardeau you eventually get the depressing ride through

an amazing place.  So decimated.

But once across the river into Kentucky things change for the better. The clever tourism (?) folks are riding the current craze for Bourbon, and have created the Bourbon Trail, loosely concentrated around Bardstown and north up to the capitol city of Frankfort.  A lot of the fashionable distilleries are now following the Napa Valley example of opening their operation to tours, sampling, and gift shops.

Having made this trip many times, we always say “we gotta stop at one of these sometime”, and never do, so we decided to by golly DO IT!   With a little research we found a bit lesser known distillery of Willett which was fairly close to the highway. And guided ourselves to their gate.

(note to marketing department, you can’t read your damn sign very well!)

And followed the quaint road

up to the distillery itself

On the way we noticed on their grounds were these interesting buildings

Which, dumb us, thought maybe were prison buildings left over from the Civil War or something.  Come to find out they are called “ricks” and are used for storing and aging the bourbon. 

We were late in the day, and the last tour was in progress, but we pretty much know the process anyway from visiting Scotch distilleries in Scotland and Wasmund’s here in Virginia.  Of course for Bourbon, corn is the main ingredient rather than the barley of Scotland.  But generally it is malted, fermented and distilled.  Although we didn’t get toured we stuck our head into the tasting room that was the ultimate destination of the tour and saw that they used pot stills (like the Scotch). In the tasting room were lots of signage about the Willetts and their history.

Sample only, i know you can't read it

Alert readers may remember that following the civil war a lot of Marylanders went to Kentucky, carrying with them the knowledge of distilling and creating Moonshine.   Many “county names” appeared in the history, and in fact Mr. Willett was a Marylander.

So we were glad we stopped after all, and although we didn’t buy any of the product (I got a hat) I did receive a wonderful birthday gift this year from a good friend of

The shape of the bottle is in the form of a pot still… get it?

Anyway after a night’s stay in Charleston, we continued on our way back to Maryland through the fog and mist in the mountains

So now we’re back in the digs preparing for a wild new year’s eve.  Our challenge will be to see if we can make it to ten o’clock.  Maybe a wee dram of Willet, since we will be

DFD

Happy new year to all, maybe 2015 will be slower than 2014 was…