Four Years And A Bourbon Or Tweleve Later

October 9th, 2014

Four years ago, I awoke in a room in the Country Inn and Suites. I was a little groggy from going out to the pub the night before, but I was also very excited. It was the day I was to marry the most wonderful person in the world. I can honestly say that day has changed my life for the better and as we move forward to present day, I can say that I have experienced no regrets.

When DaNae told me she had found the perfect place this year to spend our week-long anniversary extravaganza, I was a little confused to find it was in Kentucky. I think in my usual sarcastic tone, I said , "Sure, fried chicken for dinner every night sounds great." As my less than chipper opinions on marriage from years before have changed into something more positive, My attitudes about Bardstown have changed as well. While walking down the streets in Bardstown, I see hard working people that make an effort to be nice to others. There is even a point at the round-about crosswalk where the niceness tends to get the better of everyone and it causes a little traffic jam.

I'd like to show you what we see when we walk the streets of the city that is not just the Bourbon capital of the world, but also crowned "Most Beautiful Smalltown in America"

This is a view of one of the streets in the main downtown area, We took this picture when walking to the Hurst Discount Drugs on the corner. We noticed this old soda fountain when we first got here and immediately added it to the "Must do list."

Each one of the lamp posts were wrapped with corn, presumably from a nearby farm.

Here are some pictures of the interior of the soda fountain section:

Here I am waiting on my Chicken Salad and Diet Pepsi float:

Woohoo, just arrived.

Here is DaNae, obviously happy to have her delicious Diet Pepsi float.

DaNae ordered a hotdog which was cooked on a small electric grill, part way through they cut a slit in the middle and flipped it. Looks good eh?

Here is my chicken salad sandwich. It was very good.

While we were eating, the younger waitress answered a very brief phone call. Upon hanging up the phone, she turned to the older waitress, who apparently shared the same name, and said "They just called me little Nikki..." The older waitress responds, "At least they have stopped calling me Big Nikki!" The younger Nikki, with a defeated look on her face, said "I guess they are calling me Little Nikki now..." It was kind of sad. But I couldn't help but laugh to myself a little.


DaNae grabbed a quick shot of the Bar when no one was around. Looks pretty cool.

After devouring the amazing food and delicious floats we decided to take a tour of the Buffalo Trace distillery in Frankfort. We had already decided to visit Frankfort to keep the tradition of visiting old cemeteries.

Below is a photo of an aging house for Buffalo Trace. On average they age this product for about 9 - 10 years. Buffalo Trace does not rotate their barrels and relies on the weather to age the whisky to their specifications. Another special feature of Buffalo Trace is that they were given special permission to distill during prohibition for "medical purposes". Definitely seems like something I've heard in the news recently.

At the end of the row sits aging house V. The V is for victory. Every millionth barrel they produce ends up here and it ages until the next millionth barrel takes its place. At that point the barrel that was there is donated to charity for them to auction off.

Here is what the inside of a Buffalo Trace aging house looks like. Seem familiar?

Here I am enjoying the smells of this incredibly old aging house. It is made almost entirely of massive slats of wood. While in the barrel aging house, the tour guide told us that this very rickhouse was partially destroyed by a Tornado. Apparently it ripped the side of the building off, but what's even more amazing is that they didn't lose a drop of bourbon. Instead, They sold the whisky as a special "tornado survivors whisky," they definitely seem to have fun here.

What you see below is the bottling assembly line for Blanton's Bourbon. The room was just slightly bigger than what you see here.

Below is a line-up of the products made by Buffalo Trace. On the left is an empty bottle of Pappy Van Winkle. Why is this bottle empty you might ask? It's because this bourbon is so rare it costs about 100 dollars per shot or 5000 per bottle. Insane! I would like to state for the record that Talbotts Tavern does carry Pappy Van Winkle.

Here is a shot of the property outside the distillery. We were free to walk around after our complementary tour. I would also like to note that the tour guides specified that they opted not to join the Bourbon trail so that they could keep the tours without charge for all visitors. As a joke, the cashier in the gift shop told a couple that I had graciously paid for everyone's tour. Having looked up the tour before-hand and knowing it was free, I looked at the people and told them that it was true, I had agreed to pay for the entire party's (free) tour.

We completed the tour in the Buffalo Trace tasting room (not pictured) by tasting 2 spirits per person. As usual, DaNae and I teamed up and tried different things to get a good cross sampling of the products. I had Vodka produced by the distillery (I hate vodka, but free is free right?). Then I had a sampling of Eagle Rare. To me Eagle Rare was much smoother than the Buffalo Trace. DaNae disagrees. She had the Buffalo Trace Namesake bourbon and declared it smoother than Eagle Rare. She then ordered the White Dog (White Lightning) and we both shared. It was much sweeter, you can definitely taste the corn from the mash. As a special treat, we were all poured shots of bourbon cream, words cannot describe how delicious this was. They also put out some root beer. Basically what ensued was an amazing alcohol infused root beer float. It certainly helped make my day. DaNae whole-heartedly agrees!


We bought ourselves the cream and the namesake Buffalo Trace Whisky. Although we can't say what it is on here, so as not to ruin gifts, we did purchase a special canned good. Something fierce and gamey.

Here is a random building we found:

I believe that this is the Buffalo Trace Clubhouse. There were alot of guys walking around there.

This is a statue of Thunder the Buffalo. We were both unharmed during the photography.

DaNae posing with Thunder:

This is a trail that led off from Thunder, We didn't go since it seemed to loop around.

After leaving Buffalo Trace, we made our way through downtown Frankfort to check out the cemetery. We looked around and were quite excited to see the grave for Daniel Boone. We parked and got out to explore.

Below are three older looking graves in the cemetery. I thought they looked nice so I took a picture:

This was odd. The tombstone was literally right beside the street....

Frankfort Cemetery is up on a large Hill, you can see the entire city from here:

Below, you can see both the State Capitol and the Kentucky River.

We were excited to find such a beautiful area.

Another shot of the Kentucky River:

A little further down the path and we come to Daniel Boone's Grave,I kind of wonder if he was buried in that racoon skin hat. He is Buried with his wife Rebecca. As you can see, a tree is growing out of the grave.

Here are some more shots of the city from Boone's Memorial:

Here is DaNae, with Frankfort in the background.I was probably annoying trying to line this shot up.

 

Here I am with Frankfort in the background.

Kentucky River, State Capital, and Me.

The memorial was surrounded by a rock wall to the left and stones to the right.

The Boone Memorial really does overlook everything.

Below is a memorial to Governor Morehead. He was just down from Daniel Boone.

When we were coming down the hill a little further we noticed something odd. No idea what happened here, but it wasn't good.

Here are some older graves, you can't tell from this picture but they from the early 1800's:

Why was this guy off on his own?

After looking in that one area, We decided to go look at the odd scene from before. It looks like maybe the gate to a family tomb fell apart.

No, that's not a hobbit hole.

If you are in the mood for creepy, 3 broken Angel statues at a grave should do it for you. Seriously, don't blink.

Here's another picture of the entrance:

Some more interesting grave stone pictures:

Seriously what's going on here?

After returning to Bardstown for the night we set out to find a restaurant that someone had told us about. It was called the Rickhouse, after a bourbon rickhouse I imagine.We tried to put in the coordinates but the address seemed not to exist in DaNae's car GPSr. We entered in a rough estimate and headed over. I had looked up some reviews for the place the night before and it seemed like a good idea, it was rated very highly. We sort of meandered about a little and were having a hard time finding the place. We passed City Hall and a football field. We were on the right road (it was more like a parking lot) but we were unable to figure it out. We saw some random Catholic college and a few other places. As luck would have it, we were in the correct area the entire time, We just didn't know it.

Pictured below is the building that housed the restaurant. The entrance was on the bottom left. I am getting a little nervous at this point.

 The entrance to the Rickhouse. Starting to look nice.

When you enter the Rickhouse you are greeted by a room full of barrel art.

I ordered the 8 oz. Sirloin Medium Rare. I also got Macaroni and cheese and a side of asparagus. The asparagus was salted, herbed, and drizzled in balsamic.

DaNae ordered the 8 oz Sirloin medium with asparagus and a bourbon soaked baked potato. Looks amazing.

The Waiter brought us some bread soaked in herbed butter. It was terrific.

We decided to stop at Baskin Robbins, or if you are DaNae "Baskin Brobbins", after dinner for some ice cream.

Here I am with my Snicker's flavored icecream.

Here is DaNae with her Chocolate Peanut Butter flavor. Look at all that Peanut Butter.

 

There is no better way to end the day than with ice cream. Or so we thought!... to be continued.