2017.12.25-Memphis, TN

2017.12.25-Memphis, TN

Merry Christmas!!

We started our Memphis tour with breakfast at Brother Juniper’s, which is a small dive, but had delicious food!  While there, we met one of the waitresses who had lived in Boerne!!  Small world.  She suggested we go to the Peabody Hotel to see the duck march.  Duck march?

Every day at 11am the Peabody Duckmaster leads 5 ducks down from the roof to the lobby fountain.  The ducks stay in the fountain until 5pm when they march back upstairs.  The Duck Palace is on the hotel roof and has a screened in area where the ducks stay when they are not in the fountain.  The ducks are on march duty for about 3 months, then they are returned to the wild.

While downtown at the Peabody we walked around Beale Street, where all the jazz dives are.  It was cold and there was a wind, so we didn’t stay too long.  We did see the outside of the Gibson guitar factory, but it was closed for Christmas.

Of course, while in Memphis, we took the Graceland tour.  It was interesting to think that Elvis actually lived there and walked the halls.  He also died there.  So sad.

We also toured one of his airplanes, the Lisa Marie.  Decadence is the only word I can come up with to describe the plane.  The sinks were flecked with 24 carat gold and the seat belts were gold plated.  My, my, my…

One story they told us was that Elvis realized Lisa Marie had not seen snow.  So he gets his family and who knows how many others, flies to Colorado so Lisa Marie can play in the snow for a few minutes, then flies back.  WOW!

Tomorrow we leave Memphis for the Jackson MS area to visit with some family and then on to Vicksburg MS to quickly view the Civil War battlefield.  After that stop we’ll head back to Texas.

2107.12.17-Campbellsville, KY

2107.12.17-Campbellsville, KY

Believe it or not we’re coming up on the last few days here in Kentucky so last week we took the Maker’s Mark distillery tour which is one of the 8 formal distilleries on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail.  You just have to while in Kentucky, right?!  The grounds were lovely and still had green grass.  There was a Chihuly glass exhibit there for the last 6 months.  The day we were there they were in the process of disassembling the outside art work.  There were some lovely pieces, both inside and outside.

Notice that this is the actual first barrel made!

While on the tour we tasted several of the mash vats that were in varying stages of fermentation.  Some tasted like a luke warm corn soup and others like a very thick warm beer.  I was surprised they let us put our fingers in the vat to taste it.  I guess the distillation process gets rid of any germs we might have introduced while tasting right along with all the impurities of the water and other ingredients.  We even saw the production line where they dunk the filled and capped bottles into red wax for their characteristic bottle finishing.

This is the barrel of warm corn mash that tastes like tepid beer.

 

Each distilling line distills twice to remove impurities.

More outside Chihuly

Even more Chilluly inside in storage barrels of their special reserve

And one final permanent Chiluly piece in the barrel storage area

While on the tour, we learned about the barrels used for Maker’s Mark bourbon.  They use only barrels that hold 53 gallons and are made of American white oak; filling about 1000 of these per a day!  After hearing about the barrels, we wanted to learn more so we also toured Kentucky Cooperage where Maker’s Mark exclusively gets their barrels.  This cooperage company, which is in Lebanon KY, makes barrels for many major distillers including Crown Royal, Wild Turkey and Jim Beam to name just a few.  We toured the entire barrel making process from raw lumber into staves, then into rough barrels and finally the fire charring process, one of the important details of aging Kentucky bourbon.

As mentioned earlier we are quickly coming to an end here in Kentucky with our Amazon adventure.  One interesting detail of our employment is that 2 weeks ago after having us work for 2 months “stowing” items into storage containers we were moved to “picking” which is where you actually pick out the items from the storage bins going to customers.  It is a LOT more walking, but all the movement around these gargantuan buildings makes the day go by much faster.  We both like this task much better than “stowing.”  Our release date is this Thursday 12/21; we'll be pulling out Friday 12/22.  We’re glad to be moving on as the Kentucky winter is here and as you know our objective is a search for 65 degrees.