Bourbon trail, Louisville and St. Louis 


Bourbon whisky trail did not succeed very well due to bad timing. Went to Louisville and found out that the whole city is closed on Sundays. Continued next day to St. Louis and made a side trip to Marengo caverns.  

I planned to visit two distillers on Sunday, Heaven Hills and Maker's Mark. Heaven Hill opened at 12:00 and Maker's Mark at 13:30. While spending the morning in my hotel I learned that there are some interesting caves near Louisville so I decided to tighten my schedule a bit. Maker's Mark was some 20 miles to the opposite direction from my route so I decided go there in the morning to see it from outside and then pick up Heaven Hills on my vay to Louisville. After a nice drive through Kentucky country side I arrived to Maker's Mark and found out that the setting was perfect:





The distillery is hidden in the middle of nowhere in it is easy to imagine that long time ago moonshine was produced there and later expanded to a legal business. Definately a place worth visiting and I started regretting my decision so skip the tour.

The next stop was Heaven Hills - unfortunately the visitors center was closed for inventory so that ended my whisky tour - one distillery visited inside.

I continued to Louisville in hope to find some city life. I took some time even to find downtown! I drove around empty streets and blocks and finally realized that this is the downtown! I have never seen so deserted downtown area - no people, no cars and many blocks were empty from buildings. No shops, either, and the few restaurants were mostly closed. Never go to Louisville on Sundays! While driving around the city I noticed this funny little baseball bat:



120 feet long "Louisville Slugger"


The next day I left early as I had long drive and planned a side trip to Bluesprings Caverns. The earliest tour would have been at 12:00 so I went to nearby Marengo Caverns and took two tours there. Indiana is full of holes, it seems.



Marengo caves

I loosely followed US-50 and other small roads between Louisville and St. Louis. In US, one can expect some surprising things when travelling those small roads, like this one:



Old signs in a small village somewhere in Indiana

St. Louis looks like an interesting city, but it was monday, raining heavily and Halloween night so downtown was pretty quiet.  

Posted: Ti - Marraskuu 1, 2005 at 03:32 ip.          

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