Eastward Ho!

The day finally came, and we left for our next adventure!

Those of you who have been following us for a while know that we are just a bit off our rockers (Barb more than I), so rather than head to a warm weather locale, we headed east. I mean, anyone can head south to the warm weather, but what is the fun of that!

So off we went heading east. Barb the ultimate planner has our entire adventure planned for us. Back in the day, we would drive 7,8,9 hours a day to get where we were going and when necessity dictates we still do, but ideally, we try to keep them around 4 hours now. The other thing she tries to do is find free places for us to stay overnight. This is not only part of the adventure, it saves us money and allows us to spend it on other things. 

Day One took us from our home to Vivian South Dakota, an hour or so east of Rapid City. What is in Vivian you ask? A truck stop. That is about it. I once read a blog where a traveler stated that there is absolutely nothing special or redeeming about the small town they were staying in. I could not disagree more. small town America is the heart and soul of our country. It is the location of someone's dream, where they are going to work, raise their family and the place they would rather be, more than anywhere else in the world. 

So, I took that as a challenge. To find something special about every town we stopped in. But, I did not do it alone. I solicited the help of good friend and fellow blogger, Jim from exploRVistas. Cell/Internet service is sometimes sketchy along the way so I would text Jim our location and he would tell me an interesting fact about the town. 

So, back to Vivian South Dakota; population 98. The Black Hills area of South Dakota gets a lot of hail in the summer. In fact, our comprehensive insurance is double what most areas of the country are. Annual glass breakage insurance is more than the price of a replacement windshield, so we opt out figuring if we make it through a season without replacing a windshield, we are money ahead. What does this have to do with Vivian? Well, Vivian South Dakota holds the record for the world's largest hailstone! Weighing just shy of 2 lbs (.88kg) and measuring 18.6" (473mm). Imagine that thing hitting you on the head! Now, if that is not something to be known for, I do not know what is!

Knowing most of our first month of our travels were going to be in subfreezing temperatures, we left the rig winterized, Meaning no running water for us. The temps that night dipped down in the teens, we set the thermostat to 55 and snuggled in for the night. 

The next morning, we carried on eastward, spending the night in Holstein Iowa; population ~1,500. Home of Major League, Biggs Wehde, pitcher with the White Sox in 1930/1931.  

Our next stop continued with the baseball theme and is a town that many of you will recognize. Dyersville Iowa. If that is not enough of a clue of what that town is famous for, then how about this quote. If you build it, they will come. If you still do not know, I give up. 

Although it was bitterly cold, and there was no corn, one cannot pass through Dyersville without checking out the Field of Dreams set, an iconic movie filmed in 1989.

We walked the grounds and visitors center. The guy in the gift shop said we were the only ones to stop by that day. Things get pretty quiet in the north during off-peak times!

That night was one that we had been looking forward to for a while. Back in February, when I took that distilling class in Denver, Barb and I met a couple (Lee and Karrie) who own a winery in Dyersville, Iowa and bonus, they are also Harvest Hosts! 

We went to check in and was greeted by Lee who spent pretty much the entire evening with us He gave us a tour of their facility. They make both wine and some distillation products there. 

Wine making area.

They also have a full restaurant, if you pass through there, you have to try their ribs! Karrie joined us as we were finishing our meal and we spent a few hours catching up with her as well. We bought a few bottles of wine, said goodnight and headed to our camper. 

They had a electrical for us to plug in outside, it was much appreciated as our batteries were getting a workout with the furnace running much of the time as this was our third night in a row where it hit the teens. 

Curious Zoey checking out some curious horses.

Day 4 found us continuing east to another town we had been looking forward to for quite a while. Frankfort Kentucky is home to one of the most famous distilleries in the country. At least it is famous to me. The Buffalo Trace Distillery!

Buffalo Trace is the maker of several very good and very hard to get bourbons and whiskeys. 

Buffalo Trace, Blantons, Weller, and Eagle Rare are on my list of bottles that I look for anytime I go into a liquor store and are nearly impossible to find. So hard, that last year I only found one bottle of Buffalo Trace all year long! 

Buffalo Trace has almost a cult-like following of people trying to get their hands on some of these bottles. They carry most of their products in their gift shop, but not everything at once. There is even a Facebook page dedicated to listing what is available on a given day. Each day they offer one of four of their rarest bottles. On the first day we were there, they had Weller available, limit 1 every 90 days. Barb and I each bought a bottle ($40). They scan your driver's license to keep track of who bought one. Now that we each bought one, we cannot buy another for 90 days, this keeps people from coming back day after day and buying these allocated bottles.

Several months ago, Barb had gone on line to schedule us a tour. These tours are also very hard to get. She was on line the morning the tours for our date opened. Within minutes the first tour she wanted was booked, but she was about to get us a tour for the next time slot. All the tours for that day were booked within 20 minutes! Why are they in such demand? Well, they are free for one, plus it is an awesome tour! We were supposed to go with our friends and former neighbors, Jim and Brenda, but they had to cancel at the last minute, so it was just the two of us.

We went on The Hard Har tour, which is a behind the scenes tour into the depths of the distillery. Their mash cookers and fermenters are huge!

We ended the tour with a tasting. Although we liked everything being tasted that day, we both agreed that Weller was the best. I take that back. The Bourbon Cream mixed with root beer was delicious!

Funny story about the napkins above. As we were waiting for our tour just outside the tasting rooms, we noticed these two people who looked like a mother and son cleaning up the room. Upon closer inspection, they were not cleaning up, they were taking all the napkins left over from the previous tasting and shoving them in their pockets! People are so weird!

This it was still early in the day, Barb looked up to see if Woodford had any tour openings for that afternoon. As luck would have it, they did so we headed over there!

Just walking into Woodford had a totally different feel to it compared to Buffalo Trace. Pretentious and snooty are two words that come to mind. The Buffalo Trace tours are free. Woodford was $32 each. The bottles in Woodford were $10-20 more than you would find in a liquor store, at Buffalo Trace they were $10-20 less. We were immediately turned off by the experience. We even thought about asking for a refund. But we powered through and went on the tour and we were glad we did. 

Their fermentation vats were very old and very cool (above). The rickhouse was also very interesting, as were their pot stills. Huge, all copper stills, hooked up in a series. 

We tasted each of their products liking the Double Oak the best. 

But distilleries is not all Frankfort has to offer. Our uber researcher told us that Frankfort is the home of Danial Boone's gravesite. How could we not stop and see that!?!? Now, I doubt that I will ever be buried, but if I were, this is the view I would want!

We were going to go a few miles down the road that afternoon, but we decided to stick around, get up bright and early and see what if Buffalo Trace had a special allocation bottle available the next day. And are we glad we did! When we arrived, the line was about 200 yards long weaving back and forth.

As we were waiting for 9:00, we just people watched and looked at the surroundings. One thing you will notice around almost every old-time distillery is the trees are black and there is a black fungus growing on many of the buildings. The tour guide referred to this are whiskey fungus, common at many distilleries.

At 9:00, they opened the gates and started letting people in 20 at a time. We did not know for sure what the allocated bottle was, but the speculation of Facebook was that it was Blanton's or Eagle Rare. When we got into the area where they check driver's licenses, we saw this sign:

Blanton's! When our time arrived, we went in, got our two bottles of Blanton's and hit the road. 

Still heading eastward, we made our way 6 more hours to another Harvest Host in Weston West Virginia. MannCave Distillery is about as far off the beaten path as one can get. 5 miles down a one lane gravel road where you are praying you do not meet any opposing traffic. Luckily, we didn't. It was almost dark when we arrived, and they were within 30 minutes of closing. Again, I think we were their only customers for the day. Feeling somewhat bad for the kid (20 something) behind the counter, we did a tasting, bought a couple of bottles, left him a healthy tip and hit the hay. 

We woke up early the next morning excited to hit the road. Today was arrival day! We were finally going to get to our daughter's in Pennsylvania! We called her when we were an hour or so out. They were going to be going shopping, so we just met them at a feed mill store where they were looking at the Clydesdales. 

So happy to see them, so happy to be here. We are here for the next couple of weeks where we have multiple projects planned to keep us busy and out of trouble!