More on the Bourbon Trail and then the Creation Museum

We met Jan and a pal of hers for dinner – or rather they met us at the café we were waiting at and wasting time. Jan told me I needed to try the Hot Brown, a Kentucky specialty. A Hot Brown is toast covered with turkey, ham, bacon, tomatoes, and a cheesy gravy sauce. It was delicious! (I even recommended it to Ryan later at another restaurant and he enjoyed it too)

Jan gave us the nickel dime tour of her home and introduced us to the two dogs, two cats, duck, two birds, two hamsters, turtle, and guppies. She has lots of great art work that she has all created herself. We rinsed our tye dye from Wildman Steve and it looks amazing! Jan showed Lauren how to make a duct tape wallet and clutch, so Lauren made one of those. Jan is full of information about the area and gave us plenty of feedback on what we should see as well as draw us some maps to special places that only the locals know.

Lauren and I started our day off leisurely and headed north to Frankfurt, the capital of Kentucky. In Frankfurt, a lot of roads converge – none of them are large roads, more like what I call country highways. Frankfurt is actually fairly small, much smaller than I anticipated. Apparently, Frankfurt is the capital and has the necessary capital buildings and government offices and that is about it.

Our first stop was Buffalo Trace Whiskey Distillery, another stop on the Bourbon Trail. Buffalo Trace bottles a variety of whiskeys and bourbon, and one organic corn alcohol. We joined in on the tour and were surprised to learn some information that we had not previously heard at the other three places. Buffalo Trace has an interesting display with cross sections of barrels showing how much of the liquid is lost to evaporation over the years. In ten years of aging, half the liquid contents of the barrel have been lost to evaporation, which is a lot of loss, but in the meantime creates a well-aged strong bourbon.

The tour sort of glossed over the mash, fermentation, and distillation, but we later learned that was offered on another free more in-depth ‘hard hat’ tour. We viewed some bottling of high-end and some limited edition spirits where corking, waxing, labeling, and boxing was all done by hand. And very slowly by hand. Freddie, our tour guide, has a wealth of information about ancient buffalo trails, or traces (all the roads leading into Frankfurt), water towers, gluten allergies, and of course bourbon and whiskey – theirs and others.

The best part of the tour was the tasting. We started by tasting an ice-cold corn vodka and an ice cold Buffalo Trace Bourbon to really taste how corn flavors the bourbon. Then we tried the same bourbon at room temperature because it tastes different – I actually liked it better warm and so did Lauren. Then we sampled a ten year single barrel bourbon to appreciate age and quality – neither of us cared for it. Then we tried a bourbon cream. That was delicious. Then we mixed the bourbon cream with root beer and that was also delicious. Our beverages were followed by yummy bourbon balls. The bourbon cream was both of our favorites.

After the bourbon, we went for more bourbon. A woman named Ruth Hanley Booe invented the bourbon ball in Frankfurt at Rebecca Ruth Candies shortly after the Great Depression. We took the two dollar behind the scenes tour of the tiny kitchen. They weren’t currently making any candy so it was a little boring, but I tried to milk them for as many candy samples as possible afterwards to make up for it. We tried Kentucky pulled candy, bourbon balls, bourbon fudge, and ruthy mints. I love bourbon balls and didn’t really care for the rest of it. We purchased some yummy gooey homemade caramel marshmallow thingys that we cannot remember the name of – something uffins.

We then walked around downtown to the places that Jan said we need to go. First stop was Poor Richard’s Bookshop. We were told to walk up to the attic like we owned the place for a Harry Potter-esque book shop experience. The attic is filled with old used books piled from floor to ceiling and two or three deep on the shelves. The lighting is not excellent which only enhanced the effect. We didn’t find anything we needed, but enjoyed looking around.

There was a local craft store with some amazing quality goods, but nothing we needed. Our next Jan-find was a local lady who offers massages, hair cuts, and homemade jewelry. The earrings are five for $20 and there are easily a thousand scattered around a very small store. Lauren I circled the store and spun the racks and peered around to find the pairs scattered around until we were satisfied with our choices. It was actually pretty hard because I had five picked out and then I decided that two of them looked too similar so I had to circle through the store again.

It was getting late in the afternoon, so we left Frankfurt to take a scenic byway through Midway, full of black board fences and horse farms. Lauren commented that it reminded her of Orange, her hometown. We came into the back side of Lexington and made our way to LinkBelt, the manufacturing plant that Jan works at. Jan is an engineer and she is currently designing and building a new part of the plant that will manufacture and weld booms for cranes – something LinkBelt currently imports from Norway. How expensive it must be to import and ship big heavy metal booms! So Jan is building the machines, wiring them, perfecting them, etc, so that when she is done, LinkBelt will be able to make its own booms. It was Friday afternoon, so the plant was quiet, but it was interesting to see the spaces where things were built and hear Jan explain how she is building and designing the machines.

After our clandestine tour, Lauren and I were starving and craving meat, so we stopped for burgers and then headed north to join Chrissy and Ryan at their friends Rosemary and David’s private lake house. They welcomed us warmly with brownies and ice cream and we stayed up late just sitting and talking.

This morning we woke up early by Chrissy’s standards (8 for her, 830 for us non showering heathens), ate breakfast, and headed north. Our destination for the day was the Creation Museum. Yes, the Creation Museum… a museum dedicated to explaining and expanding upon the notion of creation. Well to them it’s not a notion.
The museum was interesting, but after a while I just couldn’t take it anymore. I was getting sort of mad and frustrated. The museum did a thorough job of trying to explain everything that us science folks think that the Bible doesn’t explain at all. I am not saying that they explained it well, but they offered explanations – usually against scientific arguments of the nineteenth century. What scientific arguments of the nineteenth century haven’t been modified or improved on? All of them. And a lot of time the facts they stated from the bible were true and were true in science, but were not related to the scientific facts they were trying to refute.

The Creation Museum did have really nice fossil displays and dinosaur skeletons and models. Apparently God created the dinosaurs, and Noah did take dinosaurs onto the Ark, which means that man and dinosaurs coexisted, but most of the dinosaurs died in the Great Flood and the rest of them did not survive much longer than the flood because of natural selection and whatever. So creationists believe in natural selection, but not evolution… what really is the difference? Nothing much to me.

Notable Quotes from the Creation Museum
-Marsupials, which have pouches, can nurse their young while moving. That may explain why on each continent marsupials were the first mammals buried and preserved after the flood.
-When the Flood destroyed the world’s forests, it must have left billions of trees… as ready-made rafts for animals… the path’s of ocean currents, carrying these rafts would explain similar animals and plants on opposite sides of oceans.
-The word dinosaur was not invented until 1841, so we would not expect to find this word in the Bible’s account of created land animals.

After surviving the Creation Museum without getting kicked out, we walked the grounds to enjoy the gardens and so that Chrissy and Ryan could feed the animals. Surprisingly they had a zorse and a zonkey which I am not sure how that was acceptable. We went to lunch at a tavern recommended by Rosemary and David that was tasty. We grabbed some coffee next door and went to check out Big Bone Lick State Park.

How could you resist a place named Big Bone Lick? Other than the name, we could have. There was a tiny museum with a mammoth skull, some assorted mammoth bones and teeth, bison bones, and arrowheads with a tiny gift shop. Outside the museum was a hilarious simulated bog scene with animals in their death throes, dead animals being picked over by scavengers, and bones laying about. Ridiculous, but hilarious. We also walked a short trail to go look at a bison herd.

I actually slept on the drive home – my first nap of the trip, but Lauren fell asleep also, no surprise. There was a big collaborative feast for dinner including salad, potato salad, macaroni and cheese, brats, sloppy joes, chips and salsa, and lemonade. We topped it all off with brownies and ice cream. Now we are relaxing on the porch and enjoying relaxing and being at the lake house.

Lauren and I are going to get up early tomorrow morning and begin some horse adventures.