Touring Some of the Bourbon Trail

     We took the opportunity to make a few more stops on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail tour. One stop was the Buffalo Trace Distillery. They hold the title of the oldest continually operating distillery in America. They remained open even during Prohibition (making spirits for "medicinal" purposes). The distillery sits on 440 acres of beautifully landscaped grounds. There are several tours that you can take and all of them are free of charge. Be aware, however, it is best if you get online and reserve your spot prior to dropping by. While tours are free, they are very popular and often filled. We took the Bourbon Barrel tour and the National Historic Landmark Tour. The Hard Hat (behind the scenes) tour was booked throughout May with no vacancies until June!

     Our Barrel Tour started upstairs in the Visitors Center. The Visitors Center is unbelievable in itself. Made from the original rack house it has one wall that sports a wainscot of charred bourbon barrel staves. It is as beautiful as it is unique (see above photo).

     Our tour guide was Freddie Johnson, a 3rd generation employee of the distillery. His Grandfather was the first African American foreman in Kentucky and had a close friendship with Col. Albert Blanton (owner of the distillery). Freddie's father mastered the ability to repair leaking barrels while the whiskey remained inside. His skills made him the first African American in the state to be appointed Warehouse Supervisor. Freddie has been with the company many years and is a real treat to  have as your tour guide. In fact, as you begin your tour, you pass a wall adorned with photos of the Johnson family documenting their contributions to the distillery.  We passed a five story warehouse which held thousands of barrels aging. The photo above tells a few stories. Look at the windows. The first two floors are barred but the other floors are not. Why? We were told that the bars kept the distiller from avoiding taxes on barrels when the revenuers came. The barrels can withstand a drop of 20 feet but burst apart if dropped from anything higher. Another thing is the black mold on the building. Seems that this mold grows only in the presence of alcohol. This fact allowed revenuers to locate illegal stills just by watching for the black mold. Also the entrance doors to the warehouse were locked by two padlocks. One key kept by the Distillery, the other by the Government. Therefore, in order to take product out of the warehouse, it required both of them to be present.

     One of the requirements of true Bourbon is that it is stored and aged in barrels of White Oak. These barrels are required to have never been used and are only used once. After that, they are sold to makers of Whiskey (domestic, Irish, Scottish and the like). Recently wineries and brewers have been aging their wine and beer in bourbon barrels to impart the unique flavor. Buffalo Trace uses barrels made from White Oak from the Ozarks.

     The barrels come from receiving to the filling line where they are filled with what is called White Dog. This is the clear distilled spirit that will become bourbon. Upon filling, the barrel if sealed with a plug called a Bung. The Bung is made from Poplar and will expand as it absorbs the alcohol thus creating an airtight seal.

     There's at least one barrel in this massive complex that I personally sealed.

     Barrels age on various levels of the many warehouses. On some floors the temperature swings cause the alcohol to seep in and out of the charred oak inner barrel infusing it with flavor. On the lower floors, the temperature swings are minimal and the fluctuations in barometric pressure moves the alcohol within the barrel. Thus it ages slower and takes longer to produce the end product.

     The tour ended with a tasting of the product. Seven year aged Buffalo Trace Bourbon and 17 year aged Eagle Rare. It was topped off with a chocolate Bourbon ball and a neat mix using Root Beer and Bourbon Cream.

     During the Historic Landmark tour, you cover a lot of the area covered by the Hard Hat tour. You see the very beginning of the product. The arrival of raw corn. It is ground and cooked making a sweet mash. Portions of the previous batch, called sour mash, is mixed with sweet mash and cooked together. Then the mixture is put into 10,000 gallon tanks, mixed with yeast, and left to ferment for five days. You see all of this process up close and personal. I actually got to sample a little of the ground corn, sweet mash, and fifth day fermented solution.

Large Mash cooker

Fifth Day solution. Top layer is mostly corn oil.

     Once again, at the end of the tour you get to sample product. Luckily we did the tour on different days so there was no reason to designate Barb as my driver.

     Above is the smallest, government approved warehouse. It house but one barrel. In this case, it is the 6 millionth barrel of Bourbon. When it is ready, it will be bottled and the 7th million barrel will take its place.

Wilderness Trails New Warehouse- 2016

Wilderness Trails New Warehouse- May 2017

     We also traveled to the Wilderness Trails distillery. This small craft distillery is just beginning to age bourbon. They specialize in Vodka and a sorghum based Rum (my personal favorite). We dropped by to see the progress on their warehouse and discovered that they are continuing to build on and are adding another, bigger warehouse and a new still for more Bourbon production. Can't wait to come back and see what's new.

Kentucky Renovation

     We finally hit the road, albeit via a different route than intended. We took the southern I-10/I-12 eastbound to Hammond, LA then northwards towards Jackson, MS. While trying to leave Jackson, there was some incident on I-55 that halted all movement northbound. So, there we sat. All lanes of traffic sitting at a dead standstill! The first time I ever sat long enough that I shut off the engine of the motorhome and took a quick nap. After about an hour we continued. We stopped at a little campground in Cave City, KY. This was a nice little park near Mammoth Cave National Park. Didn't stay long enough to unhook, just enough time to rest, so no pictures. We headed onwards the next day and arrived at our home for May, Elkhorn Campground in Frankfort, KY (more about this CG later)

     One of the primary purposes of this trip was to help our son, Shawn, to make some improvements and renovations on his Chiropractic office in Richmond, KY. We arrived on Thursday and took stock of the situation. Brandon, a good friend of Shawn's, had come in from Kansas City to help us out some. Besides the extra set of hands, he brought several power tools that we would need to make the improvements. We planned out what we intended to do and made a shopping list for the hardware store. A running bet was made as to the number of trips to Lowe's that it would take to complete this project. (I lost count but I know that we exceeded even the highest estimate!!)

Lobby and Waiting Room Before

     It was an aggressive list of improvements that we decided to take on. First and foremost, we were to move the reception area from inside the waiting room to a separate room of its own. In doing so, we needed to cut a window into the wall and make a new check in area. We added some new lighting in the office and rebuilt the desk for Tosha, Shawn's Chiropractic Assistant (CA). We also had to move some electric, telephone, and cable lines from the waiting room back to the new office area. We renovated the entry door to Tosha's new office and made it a half door. We also made a chart window where patient charts could be passed back and forth between Doctor and CA. We fixed a few outlet boxes that were loose and repaired a few lights. We replaced the old blinds in the front widows with newer, more attractive and efficient blinds. We also improved the insulation around the front windows. The last big piece was putting a door in the hallway to separate the waiting room from the treatment rooms. This required a small wall be built and the door framed, hung, and the whole thing drywalled, painted and trimmed out. We then decided to re-purpose part of the old check-in desktop and made it into a shelf in the treatment room.  All of this needed to be done with as little interruption to patient care as possible! Oh, and we did come to Kentucky to tour some, so we took some time to do that when we could. I'm tired just reading about it!!!

Welcome window (office side) is cut. New light being installed

Welcome window (waiting room side). Now you see it...

...Now you don't!

Window is roughed in

Blinds being installed

One side done

Hall door roughed in

Drywall being hung

Door installed, drywall being finished

Finished views. Waiting room side

Kids Corner 

Treatment side- New door, half door, chart window

Repurposed shelf in the treatment room

Ready to go but......

     Well, we are all packed up and ready to go but Mother Nature is throwing a monkey wrench into things. With Spring comes storms in America's Heartland and this Spring is no exception. All along our intended route is severe weather (high winds, heavy rain, possibility of hail and tornadoes). So, we have always said that the advantage of being so mobile is the ability to come and go as you please. In this case we have decided to stay put for a couple of days and wait it out. The down side is finding new campsites on short notice. Used to be easy but over the last few years, spontaneous travel changes don't always result in finding accompanying campsites. We're now in the process of making those changes and will try it again next week.

Time to Pack Up and Hit the Road

     Well, it's that time of year in southeast Texas where the Snowbird migration is in full swing. The weather folks are predicting 90 degrees by Friday! So far it has been an early Spring. The grass has been being cut since April, the flowers have been out and blooming, and the various "seasons" of Texas bugs has come and gone (ladybugs, wasps, forest webworms, and love bugs). Usually the Magnolia trees are just beginning to bloom when we are packing up but this year they have been shooting out their fragrant blooms for weeks. (photo above) Every morning I have wandered out and found a bloom to inhale. The fragrance is light but very pleasant.

     With the addition of the golf cart, we were looking at covering it for the brutal Texas summer. The more we thought about it, the more we felt we needed something more substantial to protect our investment. With that in mind, we decided to upgrade our storage shed. We made a deal with our neighbor and we traded our shed to him in exchange for one of his deck boxes. This then freed up space for a larger more substantial shed. We shopped around and found a nice lofted barn style that could accommodate the golf cart yet still allow plenty of room to store the things we needed to. This building was custom made by Cook buildings and delivered (and set up) on our site. It arrived on the back of a flatbed trailer and was lowered to the ground. The delivery driver unloaded a "mule" which was a fancy mini-fork lift. He used the mule to then drag and align the shed in it's new location.

Off loading from the trailer 

Using the "Mule" to move into position

Big double doors for golf cart access

In place and set up

A perfect fit with room to spare!

     Prior to this, we had to empty the old shed and move it to our neighbors property. I really didn't want to disassemble it then re-assemble it again. I felt that it was sturdy enough that we could easily get it to its new home by setting up some PVC pipe and rolling it to its new home. I asked our property manager if I could borrow a few moments of time from his crew to make the move. Well, they showed up and just carried it to the new location!! I didn't think that it was that sturdy but it all worked out fine.

Moving the old shed

      Our next home improvement took me a bit out of my comfort zone. We have had moisture condensation along the inner peak of our Casita roof for some time. It just gets too hot and humid around here and the ventilation is poor along the roof. We have seen what is called a ridge vent in homes and buildings in this area and it seemed to be a good solution for our problem. It looked like an easy fix that could be done by a "do it yourself-er". After studying a few You Tube videos, we found a couple of four foot vents and some shingles to match the roof.

   

      The process involved climbing up on the roof and cutting the appropriate sized slot into the ridgeline (thus providing the attic air a place to exhaust). Then the vents were nailed down and the shingles secured to the top. Now the air could vent and the moisture had some place to go other than down the interior roof of the Casita! The ridge vent itself is neat, fits well along the roof line and is barely noticeable.

The finished product.

     We are now ready to pack up and head northwards. Keeping in mind the floods of last year, we have taken as many precautions as we can to reduce any damage should the floods decide to recur. 

Early 2017

     Just a quick "catch up" on things we've been doing since returning from the Cruise. Spring came early to Texas and with the warmer weather we worked to spruce up the outside of the property. With the improvements going on at The Preserve of Texas, we find ourselves meandering around a lot more. In light of that, we decided to invest in a small golf cart to use in and around the property. We found this nice used vehicle that seats four, or the back seat folds down and there is a little space to haul things. It is raised a bit which allows us to "navigate off road" (as our GPS is fond of saying) without getting stuck. The grandkids came down over spring break and they had a great time riding around on it on trips to the playground, fishing dock, and beach area.

     At the end of February, we made a trip to Phoenix, AZ to attend the wedding of our niece. While there, my brother-in-law Bob and I attended a spring season baseball game between the Chicago Cubs and the California Angels. We had great seats and it was the first time I have ever attended a pro baseball event. My thanks to Bob for setting this up!

Not a bad view from my seat!!

     Also while we were there we attended the Good Sam rally which was held at the Phoenix International Raceway. We checked out the vendors and all of the new trinkets and gizmos that any serious RVer can't live without. The Richard Petty racing experience was doing NASCAR driving opportunities on the track and we were able to get a peek. (I have driven previously at the Kansas Speedway).

At PIR 

     One of the things that Barb has been busy with during the winter months is making gifts with her Scan-N-Cut machine. This machine can cut paper or vinyl to make things such as cards, scrapbooking highlights, T-shirt decorations, etc. We found a store in Conroe, TX (not far from us) that sells the vinyl sheets and Barb made many of our Christmas gifts, T-shirts for the guys on the Cruise, and decorated insulated mugs for a whole bunch of folks. She made a nice wall hanging tile for our niece as a wedding gift.

Tile for the new Bride and Groom

Rtic cup for our Daughter, Amanda

T-shirts for the Guys on the Cruise

     We have been planning our summer and decided to head back to the upper midwest. Since last summer's trip was interrupted by the floods in Texas, we wanted to go back and see things we missed or didn't have time for. In the process, we stumbled on to a neat workamping position in Baileys Harbor, Wisconsin. Baileys Harbor is on the eastern side of the Door County peninsula just minutes from Lake Michigan. We were given an offer we couldn't refuse so we accepted and will head there at the end of May and stay through mid-September. The park is called Beantown Campground and offers Tent, pop-up, and RV sites along with camping cabins. Here is a link to their website: Beantown Campground

Bean Town Campground

     So now we have returned the grandkids to Kansas following spring break and will return to Texas to get ready for our next trip: spending the month of May in Kentucky visiting with our son and doing some remodeling of his Chiropractic offices.