~Thursday, April 15, 2021~
Day 305
A relaxing start to the day, though I burned a little toast, but all good. Due to our later arrival yesterday, our campground host paid us a visit this morning, so now we’re official. We spent the morning getting a plan in motion of what we wanted to see while in Bardstown, and now have some awesome things on the list. We didn’t want to get too crazy since this is just a stop over and not the “full monty” of what we’ll be experiencing when we return in June.
First stop, the historical section of Bardstown. We had no idea that Bardstown, with its many distilleries, is the capital of Kentucky Bourbon. So of course, a tour is definitely in order since we know absolutely zero about bourbon. In fact, neither of us has ever tasted it. Bardstown is also home to the fourth largest Civil War museum in the country. One thing we won’t be able to experience unfortunately, is the Kentucky Bourbon Festival that takes place in September.
The town is quite charming, with a variety of family owned shops, restaurants and bars. The town seems to be strewn with one of our favorite trees…...Dogwoods, showing off their Springtime pink and white blooms. The homes near the historical part of town vary from modest to palatial. While walking one of the residential areas, we stumbled on an old
cobblestone road with a sign at the beginning, noting its historical significance. It turns out it is one of the oldest paved roads in Kentucky that today, leads you down to the Civil War Museum. Originally, in the 1700’s, it was the main entry into Bardstown. The unexpected finds are the best.
Situated in the heart of downtown Bardstown, The Old Talbott Tavern is where we had our first sip of bourbon.
Built in 1779, it is the oldest western stagecoach stop. Outlaw Jesse James is also thought to be the inn’s most famous ghost. You can still see the painting riddled with bullet holes which he put there himself. Currently, it serves as both a restaurant and a five-room bed and breakfast. Normally, the bar and restaurant are situated together in an old tavern style room. But, due to COVID, they’ve separated the dining from the bar. So unfortunately, we couldn’t have our bourbon in the “cool” part of the tavern. But we did have a cool bartender, who didn’t seem to mind our ineptness about bourbon, admitting he was no expert. He even offered up a 6-year old bourbon from the distillery that we have our tour scheduled for on Sunday, Heaven Hill. The tavern’s bourbon list was quite extensive and ranged in price from $5.00 to $50.00 for a small glass. The consensus: better at room temperature, not on ice, and it smells better than it tastes, at least for me, and at least this bourbon. Jeff liked it better than I did but we’re hoping the more tastings we do, we’ll come to learn more and take a liking to it. In Kentucky, they are quite proud of this liquid gold, so we are super curious to see what all the hype is about.
A great way to end the day…..pizza night and Perry Mason on MeTV! What could be better?