The drive to Bardstown was a bit nerve racking due to the fact it rained most of the way there, in fact it poured so hard we had the wipers on fast at one point. I was glad we put new wiper blades on last week. So my first drive with the trailer was in the dark, my second was in the rain and we have arrived at both destinations safely.
We programmed our "RV" GPS for our destination and it worked great, it did not take us anyplace where a rig our size should not go so we were glad of that.
As expected the roads are wide here and accommodate our rig easily enough, although I am sure we will hit some tight spots in the future. One thing we have noticed is that roads don't really have a name it's all basically by numbers which works great once you get used to it. For example we travelled on "68" south. It's not unusual to pull up at traffic lights and see six or seven signs showing route numbers going in all directions, confusing yes for a while anyway but it works.
Once on the main highway the posted speed was 70 mph or 112 Klm per hour we sat on 60 mph or 96 Klm per hour. I must admit the fifth wheel trailer is fantastic to tow, no sway it just tracks perfectly behind our truck. Braking is as expected even though we have trailer brakes, just make allowances for stopping distance and all is fine. Our truck has plenty of power being a 6 litre turbo diesel and pulls the trailer up most hills at a comfortable 50 mph without much trouble, I am glad we went diesel and not gas oops petrol.
Bardstown is famous for its bourbon and the many distilleries that dot the countryside. We have been told there are more barrels of bourbon than there are people in Kentucky! Many of them run tours so we went with the Jim Beam tour a steal at just $8 for an hour and a half. You're tour includes seeing how they make small scale bourbon that is one barrel making one batch of bourbon. We then saw the large still, it's about 5 stories high and puts out 300 gallons an hour of spirit and Jim Beam have three distilleries in Kentucky, I'm impressed! We saw the bottling line in production and it can do something like 20,000 cases a day! There are plenty of stats to be quoted, bourbon must contain 51% corn and be made in the USA not just Kentucky and so it goes on. Finished the tour with a tasting not a large taste due to Kentucky laws.
We did a trolley bus tour around town which takes you to all the points of interest, and at $5 each is great value, we were the only one on the bus so we got the VIP treatment. We went to the "drug" store and had lunch, yep drug store, they have milkshakes to and down the back is the pharmacy area.
We stayed three nights in Bardstown and then headed back to Johns place. The trip home was pleasant, no rain although we had to take a detour as the highway on ramp was closed, so we had to go right through the centre of Lexington. A funny thing happened at this point the GPS was giving us directions, we turned down a street and there was a group of un savoury characters sitting on the corner, I looked at Rose and said "I hope we don't end up like that scene in in that Chevy Chase movie where they steal his hubcaps". We navigated our way through town ok, I kept to the centre lane to avoid all the low tree branches, made wide turns around corners just like a truck, hey I'm getting used to this.
We arrived at John's safe and with no damage, we backed up and set up even better than last time so we must be doing something right.
The next thing to ponder is what can we improve on?
- Posted by RnR on their IPad
Location:Manchester OH
No comments:
Post a Comment