Day 17 - JD and GOO

After Monday night, a cloudy Tuesday morning seemed quite pleasant.  The weather improved, no storms but not really warm either and the forecast continued to forecast rain by noonish.

We surveyed the damage from the storm and to our surprise the Falcon had no visible damage, apparently the damage from hail was very localized. We went into the Cracker Barrel for a good breakfast and one of the workers said that her husband's car windshield was smashed. We were lucky, 4 miles away at Mitch Smith Chevrolet an entire lot of cars was pelleted by golf ball size hail and they got it on surveillance video. 

Car Dealer lot getting hail

After breakfast we headed just about 100 miles north to drop in on Jack Daniels.

When we arrived there the parking lot was completely empty, when we came out to leave about 12N, it was full, it is quite an attraction for the small 'dry' town of Lynchburg, TN.

The JD story is quite interesting. A very interesting account of how the business started is told by Mike Rowe in a podcast, it is episode #93, I highly recommend you listen to it.

http://thewayiheardit.rsvmedia.com/episode-93-as-long-as-its-legal

We took the tour and learned a bit about making Whiskey, JD is not bourbon because it is made in TN and uses a bit of a different process.

They have several tours, we took the basic walking tour of about an hour and a half, the guide was very entertaining. Much of the tour walking from building to building of that actual operation, we noticed the trees were all black. Apparently the distilling vapors combine with air pollutants that feed a fungi that sticks to just about anything. During prohibition, moonshiners had to keep moving their operations due to this tell tale sign of their business.

On the grounds there are wild turkeys everywhere, they smell the grains and come to try to get some...the guide said "they are spies from Wild Turkey".

Jack himself was about 5' 2" tall and had a size 4 shoe, the statues are a bit taller...funny how that happens.

The tour includes the original office building that Jack used, including the original furnishings. It even has the safe that is said to have caused his death. He came to work early one day and when unable to get the combo right for the safe, he kicked it.  He did not tell anyone his toe was broke and got infected.  For the next six years he had toes, then leg etc. amputated to try to stop the infection. Eventually the infection killed him at 61, but not before he turned the business over to his nephew, he had no children.

We ended the tour in the factory and then the tasting room, that was fun! That is an Indian behind the table, there were several custom Indians in the visitor center.  We later found a Harley in their gift shop in the market square, but I think Harley needs to step up their presence.


We then walked to the town square in Lynchburg, it really is a small town, and had lunch at one of the local BBQ places. We never had BBQ brisket pizza, but it was pretty good.

From JD's we drove a few hours north to Nashville, we debated on what to do since the weather was forecast to rain, and it did. We drove downtown and found a place to park, it took some looking but we did find a place the Falcon fit into, I guess it is not that big.

The visitor center is in the Predators Arena space, kind of weird but they were nice and told us what we could do in the few hours we had, which is basically walk the strip with all the Honky Tonks and listen to some live music.









We asked about seeing a show at the Grand Ole Opry (GOO) and were directed to go to the Ryman Theater (former location of GOO) and see if there were any left.  When we asked the woman at the window was not optimistic, but to our and her surprise, we got great seats due to a cancellation.

So after strolling the strip we headed for GOO with tickets in hand, we even found a KOA about 3 miles from GOO, so we secured a parking spot for the night before going to the show.

GOO is definitely a bucket list kind of place, it was very cool to be part of the on air broadcast and the performances are run like a fine tuned clock. The big event for the night was the induction of Chris Janson into the GOO, the presentation was done by Garth Brooks.  All I can say is that boy is talented, especially on a harmonica (Bob Kitchin). The only bummer was Charlie Daniels was on the billing but apparently became ill.




After the show we walked over to the Gaylord Opryland Resort Gardens, the lady at the visitor center had told us about this.

The place is worth the walk, I would say it is a combination of what you see in Vegas and the botanical gardens in Montreal. It is huge and free if you park in the mall and walk over.

The gardens have canals with boats and several water falls, pretty cool.












It was a pretty good day despite the cold temps and rain.

Today we really don't have a plan, it is 10AM and we are still sitting in the van having breakfast, so it will be a late start to say the
least.










We do know we are headed north..so let's hope it warms up.