Chris' Ramblings

- Wednesday – September 16, 2009

Today would be a short day riding wise, only about 300 or so miles.  However it would start off wet…really wet.

I woke up this morning but didn’t sleep as well as I had the past few days.  The plan for today was to get out of Nashville and head into Kentucky to tour a few distilleries. The forecast was for rain but the radar looked like the showers were circling over Tennessee with a distinct cutoff at the Kentucky border.  I got all loaded up and put on my rain gear because it wasn’t a matter of if it was going to rain, but when, and how bad.

I got on the road early but ended up sitting in the morning rush hour traffic.  Once I got a little north of the city it cleared out some but the sky opened up.  It was like riding in a hurricane without the wind.  Needless to say there were no on the bike photos today.

Just as I expected, when I crossed into Kentucky the rain stopped.  I pulled off at the welcome center and got a state map, then back on the road.  My first stop would be the Maker’s Mark Distillery.  To say that it’s out of the way is an understatement.  I had printed out some directions from google the night before and still wasn’t sure I was in the right place.  you drive through several small communities and back roads to get to the farm.  Once you’re close there is signage, but there’s not much mention of the place on the main roads.

Maker’s Mark Distillers Beer from Chris Clark on Vimeo.

After the tour I had a good time finding my way back out to the main road.  The next stop for today would be Buffalo Trace Distillery.  Tours are only given until 3:00pm so I figured I should be in good shape.  I had directions and they were pretty spot on.  Buffalo Trace is located in an actual town so it was relatively easy to find.

I rolled in and the clock on my bike said 10 minutes after 3pm.  No worries!  We’re still on central time.  Wrong.  I got there only to find out that the last tour of the day had already left.  Well the ladies in the gift shop took pity on me and tracked down the tour and we were on our way.

Buffalo Trace Barrels from Chris Clark on Vimeo.

After the tour and a quick tasting it was an easy ride up to Lexington, Kentucky.  Beth had arranged a room for me there so it was actually an early day today.  I walked across the street to the Cracker Barrel for some dinner and then back to the hotel for a soak in the hot tub and pool.  Then, as usual, back to the room to check out the internet and make the nightly Skype call to the misses.

Click Here for Day 7.

Tags: Motorcycles

This entry was posted by cablebandit on Saturday, September 26th, 2009 at 9:54 pm and is filed under Motorcycles, Road Trips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.