July 21-25, 2024
My longest tow yet, 4 1/2 hours north to My Old Kentucky Home State Park. The ride was through some beautiful hilly country. I’m writing this during the 2024 presidential political season and it’s interesting to hear that Trump’s VP selection is from “hill” country. This is definitely hill country.
I used the exhaust brakes for the first time. They’re effective and cool. Before using the exhaust brakes I kind of went too fast down one of those curvy hills. Lesson learned – go slow, use the truck.
On the last leg of the travel google maps took me down quite a back road / state highway …. many, many curves, steep drop off shoulders. But, there were signs indicating School Busses take the road and I passed other trailers so I kept going.
I arrived at My Old Kentucky Home State Park (also a golf course, championship no less) – camp host was not here buy left a note indicating to take your site if you had a reservation (yellow note on reserved sites) or if no reservation pick a site. Campground was pretty empty – I’d say 20% occupied. There was another gentleman in a huge Class A without reservations and he debated staying here or moving on to a local Walmart.
I found my site with the yellow note indicating a 5 night stay. Another back-in site. I proceeded to back in, a little too quickly (possibly due to the long drive), but long story short, just as I heard a crunch the gentleman shouted and I had backed into a tree …ugh. Thank god for bumpers. Damage minimal and lesson learned. The gentleman guided me into the site after that.
Thankful to be here for 5 nights. Not much planned – a Cooperage tour, a visit to Buffalo Trace, and walk through historic Bardstown. Also, still working a little so there are some phone calls I need to be on.
Downtown historic Bardstown. Here’s an interesting factoid:
And on my travels to here over mostly state “highways” they take me through towns like Bardstown. The town center has a city building and the state highway takes a circle (British roundabout) around the city hall. I’ve pulled the trailer around several of these to get here.
There are a few “bourbon” bars in this town but I was told to visit “The Volstead”. This is about two miles from my campsite but not very walkable. I drove and had an afternoon Old Fashioned with their “well” bourbon – Buffalo Trace.
Last year I stayed in a Louisville hotel and visited 6 distilleries – Willet, Buffalo Trace, Woodford Reserve, Old Forester, Angels Envy, and Limestone Ranch (Yellowstone). I highly recommend visiting 2-3 distilleries but they do get repetitive. On this trip I have no planned distillery tours – I will have a Cooperage tour and that’s it.
Tuesday was Buffalo Trace. Buffalo Trace does a daily release at their gift shop. They always Buffalo Trace. The daily release is either Eagle Rare, EH Taylor, Blantons, or Weller. The daily release is not announced until store opening. People often line up 2 hours early hoping for a good release. I was hoping for Weller or EH Taylor but I was not willing to stand in line. I arrived around 11AM. Eagle Rare was the release.
I purchased 2 bottles of Buffalo Trace and one of Eagle Rare ( there is a limit of ten bottles total and one bottle of the special release). In retrospect I should have bought more of the Buffalo Trace.
I don’t have many picture from the Cooperage because photographs were not allowed on the tour. I think the tour was exceptional – better then the distillery tours. This one Cooperage produces 90% of the barrels used for Bourbon. They then buy back the used bourbon barrels, recondition them, and sell them to the the wineries and breweries for the barrel aged wines and ales. The Kentucky Cooperage is now the Independent Stave Company – here are the few pictures I have.
The pictures don’t do justice to this phenomenal tour.
And a closing picture – sunset over My Old Kentucky Home State Park. Next up, Coopers Rock State Park near Morgantown, WV.
