Lynchburg, Tennessee and the Jack Daniels Distillery

Now that we've sold our house, we are playing tourist for the remainder of our time in Tennessee. One thing that I wanted to do before we leave was to visit the Jack Daniels Distillery in Lynchburg, Tennessee. It's about an hour and half drive from our house (up towards Nashville) but it's a really nice drive up and over the Cumberland Plataeu. When we got to Lynchburg, we realized that they were having Frontier Days - a cute little festival in the town square. We walked around the town square and bought some BBQ sandwiches to support the local AAU basketball team (man did that bring back memories) before we headed over to the distillery. They give free tours of the distillery all day and we all decided to go around.

Here's a picture of Sam paying reverence to Jack in the visitor's center before our tour.

Here's Sam walking around the visitor's center before the tour:

The tour was actually pretty cool. We've been on brewery tours before where they set up fake assembly lines or won't show you where the beer is actually brewed. Not this tour, you saw the actual mash boiling, the liquid being pulled from the mash, and the finished product aging in its barrels. Every drop of Jack Daniels is produced at this one location in Tennessee and it ages in storehouses on the premises (highly guarded storehouses might I say). Sam was wonderful during the whole tour (though she did try to add her own commentary from time to time.) As long as she's being carried around in the backpack, she's a happy girl.

Although normally when you tour a brewery, distillery or like facility, they'll offer samples at the end of the tour in an attempt to get you to buy some of the product. The irony of the Jack Daniels Distillery, however, is that Lynchburg (and therefore the distillery) are located in a dry county. No liquor can be served in the entire county. A few years ago, the citizens did concede a bit and passed a referendum allowing the gift shop at the distillery to sell special commemorative bottles of Jack Daniels. So, we bought one. Neither one of us likes Jack Daniels - but you're only in Lynchburg once.

In the gift shop, they had a bunch of Jack Daniels marketing material - including their Nascar car. This is the first (and hopefully the last) picture of Sam on the hood of a car :)

On the way home, we decided to stop at a Native American site. Luckily, we decided to head into the museum before touring around the site. As soon as we stepped in the door, it started pouring. We figured it was just a quick summer pop-up thunder storm so we walked through the exhibits and let Sam crawl around some (we were the only ones in there). But about 40 minutes later, we were still waiting on the rain to let up and the sky was not getting any lighter. So we decided to make a run for it. Here's Sam and Kirk all soaking after we made it back to the car.