We took a lot of winding, twisting, hilly bank roads across Tennessee and Kentucky to Shephedsville, which is about 18 miles south of Louisville. The great thing is it's pushing 80 degrees today and it's should be pretty nice tomorrow during the day, cold front coming in at night.
WEDNESDAY
It's a nice sunny day so we decided to head for the Louisville Zoo, they have a new born gorilla about two months old so that will be a bonus. We drove up to Louisville and got three blocks from the zoo and traffic was backed up all the way, we forgot it was Easter break for the schools and it looked like everybody had the same idea. After we got up another block we could see that the parking lot was already almost full and they line wasn't moving at all so we took a left and got out of their.
Decided to drive north across the river and go to the Falls of the Ohio Center, by the time we got there the wind had picked up and the temperature had dropped about ten degrees so maybe it's a good thing we passed on the zoo. We thought that the falls center was going to give more history about the people and development of the area, but it turned out to be some what different. It covered more of the geological history of the area, more fossil species have been discovered in this area then any other place in the world. It was interesting, just not what we expected. If the weather had been getting better rather then going down hill, we would have taken the trail which takes you down to the rivers edge where you can look for fossils, there were a lot of locals there fishing near the dam.
We figured that this time in Louisville we were going to try a Hot Brown for lunch, it's a local thing, I had read a review for one restaurant that was a little touristy but was suppose to have a good Hot Brown, so we programed the GPS and took a bunch of side streets and found it in the middle of a residential neighborhood. It was packed but since we've already come this far we decided to go in, as soon as we were seated and saw the prices we were UN-seated and on our way back to the car, nothing on the lunch menu was under $15.00. We just couldn't see paying $40 for lunch, at least not at a place where the tableware is wrapped up in a paper napkin and your meal is served in a red plastic basket.
Well we're O or 2 so far today, the weather has dropped another 10 degrees, we had to dig the jackets out of the backseat, the wind is picking up more and the sun has totally disappeared fro sight. Heading back to camp we spotted a Sam's Club so we stopped to get a few things and grabbed a couple of hot dog combo's for lunch, under $4.00 with paper napkins.
Monster winds and storm tonight, surprised that the weather radio didn't sound an alert, about three hours of total downpour and a rocking motor home till midnight.
FRIDAY
The weathers getting nice again so it's a little road trip to Barbstown, about 25 miles SE of here. Barbstown has about four different Bourbon distilleries that you can tour but we decided to do a few of the museums instead.
They have a Civil War Museum that is rated the fourth best in the country, don't ask me what the first three are. We headed over there and ended up getting the package deal which gets you into all three museums for $8.50, this includes the Civil War, Women of the Civil War and the War Memorial Museums.
The civil was museum is set up really nice, it takes you right from the start to the finish, following all the battles in order, since we've been to all the battlefields that were on display plus a few smaller ones we didn't spend a great deal of time reading about them, but they did have some artifacts that he hadn't seen before so spent our time on those.
Here are a few things that we don't recall having seen before or unique items.
Notice in the middle the Brass Button Clamp, this went behind the buttons and protected the coat while you were polishing the buttons.
Officers camp stove, it's just a huge kerosene wick like you would see in a lantern that they placed the pot over.
Sharpshooters Glasses, notice how the lens is clouded except for the middle.
Saddle holsters, for extra firepower.
Johnnie Shiloh
Unions version of the capture of Jefferson Davis.
From there we drove about two blocks to the Women of the Civil War Museum, we were there for about an hour and were the only two people in the museum.
I didn't expect to much from this museum, but it turned out to be my favorite. It told about the women being in the nurse's corp which was suppose to be all men because woman were to delicate to handle that type of work. The ones that were spies for both the north and south and the ones that were double agents and then the group that wanted to fight so they posed as men and fought side by side with them in the trenches, some had very successful careers, even receiving pensions.
Click on the pictures to read the storiesNurse Bridget Divers.
........Lizzie Compton
Albert Cashier, these are just a few of the different stories, probably 25 or more, that are on display there.
This one is our favorite, one because of the story and two, because it happened on Johnson's Island Prison Camp, a little known prison in Lake Erie, (Ohio).
The third museum was more of a War Memorial covering all the wars, it's named after Hal Moore, of the "We Were Soldiers...and Young Once" book and movie, so they have some interesting stuff on him.
On the way home we stopped at the Jim Beam Outpost Distillery, Don't waste your time. They have you stand around in the gift store until the next tour, the tour consist of walking 50 feet to the Beam house, sitting in the living room and watching a seven minute film on the family then back to the gift shop where you may sample two different type Bourbons and then spend $300 dollars on souvenirs. That's it that's all they had, you don't get anywhere near the distillery to see how it's made.SATURDAY
Up and At-em, Rise and Shine, Square off that lid, straighten up that gig line, lets look ship shape, we're heading to Fort Knox. Funny, that didn't work with Cathy either, OK finish breakfast and then we're going to drive over to Fort Knox to see the new Patton Museum, That's George S.
The last time we were here we had to enter through the Main gate which meant military security check points, staying on specially marked roads in and out, with the new museum it's built right on the side of US 31 and is separated from the base. So now you just park in the parking lot walk through an unmanned gate and tour the museum, no check points, no hassle. It was very crowded today with a lot of families and kids so it wasn't as enjoyable as it could have been, just to many kids running loose where ever they wanted.
There are at least 50 different tanks or armored personnel carriers on display, French, British, Japanese, German, Russian, and US. The first tanks were made by the British and when they shipped them by train they put a big canvas over them so you couldn't tell what they were, with the canvas on them their shape looked like a big water tank so they labeled the canvas's with big letters TANK, and that's how they got their name.
Found in Kabul in 2002 in an old military scrap yard, and after Restoration.
They have one room set aside just for General Patton, my favorite, Patton saved everything from his military career so there are a lot of artifacts of his here.
Units that were under Patton's command during the war.
Staff car he was riding in during the accident that caused his death.
simple grave, buried with his troops.
As close to the GOLD as you're going to get.
On the way home we ran into a major traffic jam on a little two lane road, turns out it's one of the two times a year that they hold the Knob Creek Machine Gun Shoot & Military Gun Show, it's billed as the Largest gathering of Civilian owned machine guns in the world. We have things like this in Michigan every weekend but they call themselves Militia or Freedom Fighters.
Finally made it back to camp in time to see the last 7 innings of the Tigers game.
