Today we took ourselves on an educational field trip to the Jack Daniel’s Distillery in nearby Lynchburg. I have been indirectly funding the pension plan at this venerable company for some 40 years and we figured we might as well see where all the money went. After a drive on roads that follow the terrain and point in all directions except the direction we intended to go, we arrived at the distillery and headed into the visitor center and museum where we purchased tickets to go on one of their three categories of tour. We bought the pricey one ($25 a head) which included the tour and some tastings of a variety of products.
The walking part of the tour takes interested visitors past an EPA-approved rick burner with a smoke stack scrubber. They make their charcoal here from almost incinerated white oak. The guide told us that the essential criteria for Tennessee sipping whiskey is a corn mash, malted barley and rye grain mixture and the passage of every drop of alcohol through not less than a 10′ column of charcoal. The tour then heads over to a big grotto in the adjacent cliff side where there is a spring that produces abundant clear and tasteless water without any iron or other nasty things in the liquid. Visitors can try the water at a number of on-site drinking fountains.
Then we headed into the grain mill and the fermenting buildings that are adjacent to two large and two small distillation towers that collectively produce 100 gallons of 140-proof alcohol per minute. A bit of this product is used to ignite the ricks of white cedar for even incineration but the rest of it is sent on into the plant where it re-mixed with water to get the alcohol content down to where folks like it. We wandered through the fermentation section where strong odors and high temperatures were encountered. The fermentation puts off so much heat that they are required to refrigerate the fermentation tanks to keep the mash from turning into crummy-tasting corn meal.
We popped into the bottling line for Gentleman Jack (twice through the charcoal) but, since it was Sunday, they were not operating this little moneymaker. After distillation, the management diverts a little of the product to make small runs of specialty whiskey with honey or molasses or cinnamon for those requiring weird whiskey.
The tour was great fun, the tasting was okay but amounts provided were slim but, on the whole, we had a good time despite the very warm weather which had me sweating like a whore in church.
We left the distillery and headed into the town of Lynchburg which is actually a few 19th and early 20th century buildings built around the city hall located at the middle of the square. Peggy made a foray into the general store to buy Jack Daniel’s stuff and emerged soon after not too much poorer. On the way out of town we could see one of the distillery’s barrel houses where their products are aged. They have 89 seven story barrel houses on the property which hold a million gallons each. That’s 89 million gallons in storage. Nice long-term asset.
We got some photos. Check them out by clicking here

At 0600 hours this morning, we were treated to a recorded version of the national anthem right before about 50 speedy and very noisy bass boats blasted off into a fishing tournament. They departed from the docks in our park, not far from our sloping campsite. However, after coffee we were back in exploration mode so we took a blind orientation drive in the areas around Winchester. This part of Tennessee is quite hilly and lots of creeks snake across the landscape. Everything is bright green. The roads are okay in most places. It is pretty. We started by driving into downtown Winchester, across the lake from our campground. Right away we spotted some absolutely architecturally gorgeous residences right on the main drag. As a matter of fact, we were pretty dazzled by the abundance of spectacular old homes there are in this part of the world. Folks must be rich around here.
We passed through a town called Estill Springs before getting to Tullahoma where George Dickel Mash Whiskey is made. We drove a nice, serpentine path into a narrow valley, which locals here spell as “hollow” and pronounce “holler,” where we found the distillery and also spotted a male scarlet tanager starting to sport his extravagant breeding plumage. He was fully pimped out. We get to add him to our list of first time sightings of birds we never see in the West.
After the distillery, we meandered through the towns of Normandy and Wartrace. Much joking went on about “Never seen a wart race. Mine all hold still” and other similar droll comments. Wartrace has a bunch of really spectacular old and new residential structures and they are quite pretty. After Wartrace, we headed for Manchester and its beautiful Old Stone Fort State Park. It is pretty country but it seems more suited for folks with little trailers. I wouldn’t want to go in there with our 34 footer. We cut from Manchester back to our RV park in Winchester by passing through the Arnold Air Force Base but we didn’t see any air forces.
See the pix. Click here

Yesterday we did very little except prep to leave Natchez Trace Thousand Trails for more fun to the east. Today we departed this large campground. The scenery and wildlife and most of the folks were great but management loves to mow the huge expanses of grass at the crack of dawn prior to our normal wake-up and in the evening when the dry soil and pollen can emanate from the mowers’ exhausts as giant clouds of asthma. The one jerk we met was a fellow Californian who, in a fit of ineptitude, ran over our bird feeder with his RV while his phone-fascinated spouse watched without doing anything until it was too late. Jerks.
We drove a bit south from the campground before we got on venerable US-64 and we stayed on it all the way to Winchester where we pulled into Winchester City Park almost right downtown. There are massive ball fields, a lake right across the road, lots of folks having fun, no wifi, no sewer and shaky RV spots. We got into the only one that was long enough to take our 34′ trailer but it runs uphill pretty steeply so we are camping on a bit of a slant. As long as I keep my feet on the floor of the RV, my nifty swivel chair stays right where I want it. If I lift my feet, the casters take the chair right to the bathroom/restroom passageway closer to the front of the rig.

For the last two days we have been tied up with making camping reservations but were handicapped by being unable to find locales where we had both WiFi and phone coverage. Our phone will sometimes work in one spot when we drive up the hill from our campsite. Unfortunately, the WiFi only works adequately when inside one of the campground buildings but none of them are built where the phone works. We made our best headway when we drove about 15 miles over to Hohenwald and stopped in at the public library for their free Wifi. Even the library wanted cell phone calls limited to outside or in one interior corridor. That newfangled fancy-schmancy communication stuff is not a priority in this region.
Today we jumped into the truck and took off going north toward Nashville which sits on the edge of the Cumberland River. Nashville is a city with a long history of Country Western music, a genre I personally find soul-suckingly distressing. However, lots of folks here in Tennessee do like this type of music which includes yodeling, tone-deaf harmonizing, twanging and unique pronunciations of common English words. Lots of the alleged musical artists seem to wear cowboy hats although I don’t think many of them have ever seen a cow, grasslands or a horse. I didn’t spot any wearing fuzzy chaps.
Certainly one of the Meccas for this type of music is the Grand Old Opry which I believe is a reference to an opera of some sort. I used to see quaint little concerts on TV broadcast from the Grand Old Opry as I switched them off in my youth. I always envisioned the Opry as being an ordinary theater-type venue, maybe sandwiched between two low-rise masonry buildings in a downtown area with very narrow streets. Nothing could be further from reality. The Grand Old Opry building at a place called Gaylord Opryland is enormous and looks like the main auditorium should seat not less than 4000. The backstage area looks like the loading docks at a Walmart distribution center. There is an affiliated hotel called the Gaylord Opryland Resort next door that may be the largest hotel I have ever seen. Even the mega-resorts in Vegas are dwarfed by this monster. The complex has its own freeway offramp.
Fortunately for both Peggy and me, we were unable to go in for a sample of the caterwauling because we had to floss. We drove around the Nashville area and spotted some magnificent estates that can only be called modern plantations. Nashville’s downtown area is accessed through a series of beltline freeways with many left-side exit ramps requiring multiple quick lane changes and universally crummy paving. It is challenging for ignorant, elderly types.
On the way back from Nashville, we decided to swing through Leiper’s Fork again before heading back south on the Trace. There are some great historical buildings and some gorgeous modern plantations nearby and we loved the back country cruise before jumping onto the Trace where we spotted not less than 15 wild turkeys.
We got a few pictures along the way. To see them, click here

Today we took a spin over to a city called Columbia. There are many antebellum homes and plantation residences in the area and we spotted quite a few in town. There are substantial renovations in progress in the buildings surrounding the main square and city hall. The little main square is surrounded by historic masonry structures occupied by coffee shops, a record store, bakeries and the usual cute downtown stuff. Many of the nearby houses are quite pretty and well-maintained, a treat for architecture buffs like me.
Columbia is also a place where there has been a long history of discrimination against those without milk-white skin, continuing a long history of lynching right up until the Korean War. It seems those that shriek the most about liberty are the first to deprive others of their right to a fair trial by their peers before burning their houses, exercising them at the end of a chain behind pickup trucks and ultimately stringing them up. Assholes.
Columbia also has one of the two still-existing houses where James Knox Polk, 11th President of the United States, lived. He also lived in the White House. Here he lived in a nice but not massive downtown corner house in Columbia from 1818 to 1824 and we swung in for a glimpse. Polk’s second house was quite a bit smaller than our current prez’s second residence.
This is another time when we have gone to the alleged residences of famous Americans and found that almost all of the houses were actually the places that George Washington, James Polk, Thomas Jefferson, Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis temporarily occupied, some of them staying as little as three months. Therefore, there can be many houses for George Washington, et al. We found the same to be true for the oldest house in the U.S.A., of which we have been to three.
Lotsa gorgeous birds here. We also spotted a coyote. I didn’t know there were coyotes in Tennessee.
See the pictures from today by clicking here

We drove a loop west of our camping space at Natchez Trace TT today. There were no real towns that we passed through but we understand the area is called Buffalo Valley. I am not even sure what route we took but we did notice that the roadside scenery was beautiful and there was some good Americana along the highway.
Americana pix included. Click here

Meriwether Lewis, half of Lewis and Clark and their exploration of the northwest died near our camping spot but not recently. We started out today by stopping in at his grave site and monument just a few miles up the Trace. There seems to be a dispute about how Captain Lewis died. Some say it was suicide because he was remembered as mopey, depressed guy who thought finding a passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific wasn’t enough, and also because he wasn’t married to some rich woman. Other folks seem to think that Lewis’s death was a murder because suicides rarely shoot themselves TWICE and cut their throats, as well. Anybody slicing his own neck, putting one into his head and then one into the abdomen would seem a very determined suicide victim to me.
There is a nice park around Lewis’s monument which is a big broken granite column. Allegedly, a broken column represents a life cut short. The park also has a campground and there is a short road down to the Little Swan River. The river area and the road there are very nice; this is a gorgeous part of Tennessee.
Our explorations then took us a bit east of the Trace to Summertown. The road was bordered by some stunning upland hardwood forests, emerald pastures, tidy farm buildings and a couple of Dogpatch-like estates with multiple stripped single-wide mobile homes, wrecked cars, partially overgrown broken agricultural equipment and numerous dead lawn tractors. The hillbilly tenants grinning from some of the porches appeared dentally challenged and whiter than skim milk.
In Summertown we found Schafer’s Meats and stopped in for very tasty brisket and pulled pork dishes and some meat from the counter. They sell very tubby sausages so I grabbed some. The meat in the case made me salivate unnaturally.
See pix. Click here

After quite a bit of time in Mississippi, a bit in Alabama and considerable time in Tennessee, today we finished the entire length of the Natchez Trace. We started in Natchez over on the Mississippi River on March 31 and finished up at the northern terminus to this historic road a little south of Nashville today. We were diverted a few times to places like Vicksburg but mostly enjoyed the scenery all along the way. It is a bit flat for our liking in MS and AL but the part here in central Tennessee is gorgeous and a bit less planar. Up toward the north end are the towns of Franklin and Leipers Fork, both with early 20th century storefront masonry buildings lining the main drag. Franklin is sort of like a upscale version of Old Town America except the folks living there appear to be quite affluent with black BMWs, Denalis and bitterly ugly Porsche Cayennes filling up the almost claustrophobic downtown streets. Quite a few of the buildings seem to have been recently built but with the same architectural style that keep them cozy on downtown avenues. Leipers Fork is right next to Franklin and offers a little less high fashion and a whole lot more reality in their old buildings. Some are such authentic old structures they have fallen down and now look like large piles of scrap lumber. The country surrounding these two towns is gorgeous.
Near the towns and all along the last 50 miles of Trace there is magnificent scenery; clear water creeks, turquoise rivers, colorful roadside flowers, a variety of stunning varieties of flowering trees and we also spotted some ground hogs and wild turkeys. The turkeys here have much lighter-colored feathers than those in the west. It must be good camouflage because they are hard to spot, even when they are near the road.
At some of the turnouts from the Trace we also found that jerks here use very similar graffiti to the jerks in the west. Some of it is quite familiar and written in English. Jerks must be irritating regardless of locale.
See the pix. Click here

I was still suffering from an ancient person’s malady, namely geezer’s mystery limp or spazzo oldo, when we got up this morning. Fortunately, Peggy gave me a little encouragement and we decided to go on a short excursion on some of the roads around our current camping spot here at Natchez Trace TT.
Our morning was spent checking out the birds, who we have baited to our feeder right outside the trailer. In addition to rose-breasted grosbeaks who are pretty new additions to our list, we got to add American goldfinches and summer tanagers today. The goldfinches are a striking assortment of yellow and black and the summer tanagers look like cardinals; just as red but not nearly as rotund and with much pointier beaks.
Once we got going, we ended up driving up some nearby creeks or small rivers. This part of Tennessee is quite beautiful, especially the locations where water has made massive cuts through the sedimentary rock formations. The plants seem very happy. There seem to be more animals here than we saw in western TN.
See pix. Click here

Yesterday I awakened and my disgusting body was in revolt, attacking my knee. I don’t remember doing anything strenuous in the days leading up to yesterday (or almost any days before that) but my pesky mid-leg joint has laid me low. I am sure it irritates my beloved spouse while I convalesce without doing any sightseeing.
I will limp around the outside of the trailer because I need to dump the waste tanks today but it will take me a while to spaz my way to the discharge point on the driver’s side of the trailer. I am sure my sweetie will allow me to lean on her as I address this vital task.
I hate being physically prevented from doing what we want. I hope my gamey knee heals up pretty quick because I have already lost patience with geezerism.
Got some visitor pix. Clickhere