Tennessee Trip

My Christmas gift to Aaron this year was a weekend trip to Lynchburg, Tennessee--horse country and home of the Jack Daniel's distillery. We had lunch at Miss Mary Bobo's, an old boarding house that serves excellent Southern food, family style and all you can eat.

The Jack Daniel's distillery has an excellent tour. We started with the area where the ricks of wood are burned into charcoal.

Two charcoal makers are responsible for making all of the charcoal used to filter the whiskey. It's fascinating to learn that there are artisan charcoal makers gainfully employed in the world today.

This natural spring where Mr. Jack first set up his still is the water source for all of Jack Daniel's whiskey. It is also probably the reason why Lynchburg is obviously a thriving, prosperous small Southern town, when so many Southern towns of a similar size and era have fallen into decline.

One of the barrel storage houses. They have a lot of storage, for a lot of whiskey. Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to take pictures inside the distillery or barrel houses. Best part of the tour: getting to taste the fermenting sour mash before it goes into the distillery (it tastes kind of like cornbread batter that's gone off).

Mr. Jack's old office. They are happy to allow visitors to take lots of photos of the sites that play into the myth of the Jack Daniel's tradition.They definitely push the old-timey tradition story throughout the tour and visitor's center!

The other big part of our trip was staying at the Clearview Horse Farm! The owner of the farm is a delightful British horse lady who fell in love with Tennessee and the Tennessee Walking Horse while she was visiting Elvis country. Most of her horses are very well trained retired show horses.

Neither one of us had ever ridden a horse, and Aaron in particular was really interested in riding a horse. (I've read so many fantasy novels where people ride on horses, and I just have no idea what that feels like.)

We had so much fun that we're thinking about going back with the girls this spring or summer when the weather is nice!