Okay… better late than never – here’s post 2 of 2 on my son William’s visit to my daughter’s house in Bowling Green, KY. William and his girlfriend Jasmin arrived on the 22nd of August and left on the 11th of September.
Other than just seeing the local sites, restaurants, shops, etc., – William also helped out with a couple projects around the house. He helped paint a few of the interior doors, mowed the extensive lawn, etc., You might recall from previous blog posts that this is my youngest daughters (Joleen’s) first house along with her fiancé Dylan and one of the reasons we’re parked here is to help out with some of the renovations.
Over the labor day holiday, William & Jasmin went to rent a car so they could drive south and see some more sites on their own. The rental agency upgraded them to a pickup truck for the same price due to the unavailability of a compact model. They ended up at the beach in Pensacola FL and William also ended up with a sunburn 🙁
When Will & Jasmin returned from their labor day outing, we all (except for Dylan, who had to work) drove up to Clermont, KY to the Jim Beam Distillery for a tour:
Inside the distillery:
At the end of our distillery tour, we had the opportunity to fill our own personalized bottle of Knob Creek.
Then we walked through an area to watch the large scale bottling process.
At the end of the distillery area tour, we got to see a display room with all the old Jim Beam decanters that were sold throughout the years:
Here’s a little “Did you know” item… This is one of the original I Dream of Jeannie bottles that the TV series used (below).
We boarded the tour bus again to go over to one of the Aging Warehouses and the much-awaited tasting room:
We walked by various outbuildings to one of the aging warehouses.
Our tour guide explained how long each barrel is stored before bottling. This display (below) shows how much whiskey is left in each barrel after a number of years due to evaporation i.e., “angels cut” and soaking into the charred wood of the barrel i.e., “devils cut”.
It was amazing how high the barrels are stacked in the warehouse.
Notice the Mila Kunis barrel (below) from the recent series of Jim Beam commercials.
After touring one of the barrel storage facilities our tour guide took us to the “tasting-room”. A highlight for many of the tour guests, except for the fact the “tasting” is limited to tiny sips of 5 different brands.
All the Jim Beam brands on display:
The “tasting” machines automate and limit the amount each of us got to sample the various brands. We were each given a swipe card loaded with five “tastes”. You had to insert your card into the machine and press a button to get a “taste”. Oh well, at least no one was going to get a DUI, right?
After navigating our way back through the gift shop with only a few small souvenirs (and payment for the personalized bottle during the tour) we headed back to the house in Bowling Green with a quick stop at Fort Knox. We thought we’d check out the Patton Museum but we didn’t get through the gate because Will, Joleen, and Jasmin didn’t have ID cards and we would have to register at the visitor gate building which looked like a long process and it was getting late. So we just took pictures of the Gold Depository (←link) and headed on home.
Back at the house, Will & Jasmin bought a pool earlier for Joleen & Dylan so I even took my turn one day getting a sunburn.
On the last weekend of Will & Jasmin’s visit we had the opportunity to attend a “balloon glow” in Bowling Green. It was nothing like the Albuquerque Balloon fest or others we’ve visited in the past like in Lake Havasu or Memorial Park in Colorado Springs, but still always cool to see.
On September 11th, a sad day for many reasons, we drove Will & Jasmin back up to the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport and said our farewells.
It was good seeing William & Jasmin again, hopefully again next year.
On the way back from the Cincinnati airport to Bowling Green we took the long way home (scenic byway) through Lexington. At the beginning of our trip home we noticed that we would pass by the fairly new attraction “Ark Encounter” a life-sized Noah’s Ark, so we used the opportunity to stop by and check it out.
Entrance fee was $40 per person and $10 for parking.
There were several other “expensive” options at Ark Encounter as well. None of which we took part of.
We boarded a bus for the short ride to the Ark.
Life-size Noah’s Ark. Pretty impressive.
We toured each floor of Noah’s Ark to view stuffed animal displays and many, many small interpretive rooms where we fought the crowd to look at pictures, dioramas and displays. My take-away was that it was a little overpriced and most of the interpretive displays too small and cramped for viewing with crowds of people. It is definitely something to see once, but don’t think we’d go back again. It was a lot of walking as the ramps inside between each floor extended the entire length of the Ark, then you’d circle each floor just to take another long ramp to the next floor. View images (here).
I’m finishing up this blog post from Memphis, TN. We said our farewells and ‘see-ya-laters’ to daughter Joleen & Dylan and hit the road on the 21st. It was great staying with them for the last two months and we got a lot of renovations done on their new house. Stilla especially enjoyed the quality time and use of a full kitchen while we were there 🙂 Love ya Joleen & Dylan, til next time!
My iPhoto program is still giving me some grief (it crashed again and I had to rebuild) and I finally broke down and got a new iPhone 6S and am working through how to get new pictures downloaded and saved for the blog. It seems that I can’t just plug my phone into the laptop anymore and have the pictures download like a digital camera does. All the pictures I take on my iPhone want to go to iCloud no matter what settings I make, so I have to manually download pictures from iCloud (which is a lengthy and convoluted process) before I can even edit and resize them. So, I guess what I’m saying is that my next blog post might be awhile. I have a lot of pictures that we took at Graceland yesterday that I’d like to share… anyway, stay tuned.