Kate and I took a driving trip across the south a few weeks ago. This is our first family vacation by ourselves in quite a few years and was a much needed get away for both of us. We started in Charleston, SC where we had some good food did some shopping along the downtown main drag and visited Fort Sumter.
Nice view of Charleston from the top of Fort Sumter. We ate at a local bar (with good beer) for dinner and drinks the first night. The second day we had some bar-b-que and had a nice dinner at Coast. Kate's braised grouper was one of the best meals of the trip.
From there we headed to Asheville, NC to eat some good food and see some mountains. Well it rained most of the day in but we got to see a little of the Grove Park Inn and the area around it.
As you can see the weather started out kinda dreary and we were in and out of the clouds and rain most of the ride up on the ridges. We did find some drier hikes into some local waterfalls in Pisgah National Forest and Cherokee.
From Cherokee we headed north into Kentucky up to Lexington. After losing my butt to Kate in darts at a local bar we got a good nights sleep to cover some ground the next day visiting some distilleries.
We started the next morning to a chilly 55 deg as they were having a summer cool snap which was great for us and headed to our first bourbon distillery stop of the day, Woodford Reserve. Luckily for us they were actually making bourbon this morning so we got to experience the entire process to start off the day.
We grabbed a quick lunch and were headed off to make the second stop at Four Roses Distillery. We made the tour just in time and got to walk around very interesting architecture and learn a little history of the bourbon and distillery. The interesting nugget about this distillery is that until 2002 all the bourbon they made went overseas to mainly Japan but now they make a couple different bourbons for the US market.
From there it was on to Makers Mark. The tour was great and although they were in the summer shut down mode they were actually bottling and hand-dipping the bottles as they came off the line. In the gift shop you can try it yourself and although mine doesn't look professional, I think it looks pretty good on the tying desk.
The next morning we got going early and with the help of the time zones we were able to visit Lincoln's birthplace and Mammoth Cave and get into Nashville the same day. Apparently, Kate had visited something to do with our 16th president in Illinois as a kid and was convinced that Illinois was the "Land of Lincoln". Well as usual she was right, and we got to learn a lot about Lincoln's early life in Kentucky and visit the location of his birth homestead. Mammoth Cave was also great and we got on the first Historical Tour of the morning and got to learn about the history of the cave.
We finally made it to a brewery, Fat Bottom in Nashville. The bourbon barrel aged brew was amazing. We also had a great tour of the Grand Ole Opry. We got to see all the backstage areas and stand on the circle on the stage. We saw where Hey Haw was filmed and some of the same locations that are on the show Nashville. That evening we had drinks and dinner in the Hermitage Hotel at the Capitol Grille and Oak Bar. Top 5 dinners of our married life for sure. We started off with the onion bisque and I had the salmon special and Kate had the flounder and finished up with a chocolate dessert. From Nashville we started our trip back home with an overnight stop in Athens to visit Amy and have some sushi and set up a lunch in Tifton to see Grandmother and have lunch at Pit-Stop with Mom and Dad. We had a great trip and we are already planning our next one!
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