Drink and Rockets – the perfect combination 11/2 and 11/3/12

Huntsville AL on 11/2-4/12

We are going downstream on the Tennessee River past scenery we saw on our way to Chattanooga. So the scenery is the same as when we came east. Only a little yellower and redder as the trees continue to change color.

It is still cool – only getting to about 60 during the day and dropping to the 40s or cooler at night. It is not windy so there is little to note about the boat journey. It is nice boating weather; although it occurs to me we have not worn bathing suits or been in the water since August. That is NOT what we had in mind. Oh well, enough complaining about the weather.

As we continued West on the Tennessee we stopped in Huntsville. The two main sites in Huntsville AL are the US Space and Rocket Center, home of Space Camp, and a convenient way to drive to Lynchburg TN to visit the Jack Daniels Distillery.

First stop was Lynchburg. Dick and Deanna had a friend, Gene, visiting from New Jersey. He rented a car and took Dick and Deanna. Michael and Judy returned from their visit home for the Frankenstorm so they had a rental car too. We all piled into the vehicles and off we went for a road trip to Lynchburg. It takes about an hour to get there through winding country roads.

Lynchburg TN – Jack Daniels Distillery

Jack Daniels is a little industry – everything in the little town is related to JD. Family members are still involved in aspects of the company even though it is now owned by Brown Foreman. We met the great grandniece who runs Miss Mary Bobos Boarding House, a restaurant in Lynchburg. She stops in to say hello to diners.

We stopped in the visitor’s center to get our tickets for the 12:30pm tasting tour. 

We had lunch reservations at Miss Bobo’s, a big home restored in the mid-2000s. People eat family style in the rooms where Jack Daniels and other bachelors lived most of his adult life. 

Evidently Miss Bobo, who died not so many years ago, was not a good cook but she was a good manager and hired good people around her to run the boarding house and kitchens. The food was good. The menu never varies: fried chicken (mmmm), beans and red pepper relish (sold in the store of course), spiced apples (also sold in the store), greens and vinegar, macaroni and cheese, and chess pie for dessert.

Lynchburg is located in a county that has been dry since Prohibition came to Tennessee in 1909. It requires 2000 citizens to vote to change it but only 300+ residents in the town so it remains dry. Isn’t that a silly rule? Wouldn’t it make more sense if a majority or even a super majority if you want could vote to repeal. But setting the number at an arbitrary figure higher than the population seems kind of foolish.

JD Distillery has a large, modern visitor’s center. So many people love Jack Daniels. Matt Schmidt drinks gallons of it. One member of our little group, Dick Shepherd, drinks gallons of it as well so he was very excited to make this trip. Dick and his friend Gene who joined us for the visit are both JD Squires, a little club in which members own a square inch of JD Distillery. We got to visit the Squires Room filled with JD artifacts and stuff commemorating the JD Squires!! We felt special!!

The distillery itself seems quite small for the large name of this product. Since it is such a popular drink, many people visit every year so the visitor’s center is necessary to coordinate the tours and many fans. They even have buses to move people around the property. It is sort of like Disneyland for drinkers. Kermit says it is the Holy Grail for whiskey drinkers because there are no rides.

The tour starts with the place where a couple of guys burn wood to make charcoal. They spray the wood with 140 proof alcohol produced in the first stages of distillation so the charcoal is not tainted by petroleum products. We got to taste it – very alcoholy.

Then we followed the distillation process through the various stages – water, to mash, to mellowing, to barrels, to packaging, to tasting. It was pretty great tour. The buildings haven’t been upgraded much. I suspect JD would be comfortable and know his way around if he came for a visit.

This is Katherine with Jack on the Rocks (they are hilarious here!) in front of the cave where the water comes "for every drop of Jack Daniels ever made". See I was listening. 

This is our group with our guide, Jesse James (seriously) going into the mash building where they make the mash. 

You think Jack Daniels is not part of the fabric of this nation? The band REO Speedwagon took its name from this fire engine at Jack Daniels Distillery. Or so they claim!

This is where they store the distilled liquor before mellowing in charcoal. 

This is our group going into the mellowing room where they drip the distilled alcohol through the charcoal. 

Visiting Jack Daniels Distillery prompts a contrast to Hiram Walker tours we took this year and last year.

·         Hiram Walker traveled extensively in Europe and brought that influence back to Detroit/Windsor in his headquarters; JD evidently  never left the hollow, his headquarters was a shack in the woods, the distillery is much smaller, and the entire JD operations seems much less sophisticated than HW.

·         JD started at a very young age almost as an apprentice with a guy making moonshine then took over the business at age 13 in 1863, a few years after HW began production in Windsor Canada in 1958. This was the only business JD every built whereas HW and his sons had their hands in lots of businesses and HW himself operated other businesses before starting the distillery.

·         Both companies kept everything in house – grow the corn, make the charcoal, make their own barrels, outsource the used mash to the local livestock; But HW did it at a much larger scale, maybe because of his relationship with Henry Ford

·         HW had an advantage being located in Canada so he could take advantage of US Prohibition. He got really rich during Prohibition while JD had to stop production and go into other businesses for 30 years; no talk of speakeasies and underground production at JD. His nephew Lem opened a hardware store for the 30 years of Prohibition before reopening the distillery in the 1930s.

·         Tastings were different too based on legal restrictions in TN – only allowed 1 oz. split among 3 varieties at JD but 5 oz. (or more) at HW, plus at JD a person couldn’t give their sample to another person and at HW some lucky people drank lots of the leftovers

Other observations: Don’t kick the safe. Evidently JD got to work early one day late in his life. He needed to open the safe to get something but he forgot the combination. Frustrated he kicked the safe. His foot got infected and gangrene set in. After a bunch of amputations to stop the infection he died. The guy must have had quite a temper.

We heard other stories that support the idea that he had a temper. Jack owned the local back (he owned the town). Evidently he lived at the boarding house with another fellow who operated a Ford dealership in Lynchburg. He got in some sort of fight with that guy and refused to allow any loans to people who wanted to by Fords from that guy. And they both lived in the same boarding house for most of their lives. Together at the same time. Not talking. The guy must have had quite a temper.

Smells. It smells good. The tour took us through the process in order so the smell went from strong corn to mellower to that familiar charcoal smell that we associate with Jack.

Charcoal filtering – This was pretty interesting. They use about 10 feet of charcoal. The distilled liquor comes out of the mash area and drips drip by drip into the vat of charcoal. Our guide, Jesse James (seriously) said the charcoal can only be used once. Tasters (like James) regularly taste the output and decide when to change the charcoal. They do it by taste, not by a specific time chart. Isn’t that interesting?

As must as he would like to switch, Kermit still likes Crown Royal better. Although since I am writing this the day after the election he says the election results might make him change brands. I am not sure why but that is what he said!

U.S. Space and Rocket Center

 


The US Space and Rocket Center is an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institute “featuring more than 1,500 artifacts representing milestone achievements in space exploration”. Guides in blue flight suits or blue sweatshirts are everywhere leading tours or volunteering to answer questions about what you are seeing.

They offer a bus tour of the Marshall Space Flight Center, which is still a working NASA operation. In order to take that bus tour you have to show ID, have no felony convictions, no outstanding warrants, and be a US citizen. Isn’t that interesting? We didn’t go.

We saw an IMAX movie about Space Junk – kind of a scary idea that everything that has gone up in space since the 1960s is still orbiting out there waiting to come back with a big bang and wallop the Earth. My guess is it will head to Oklahoma since all sorts of bad things happen there, weather wise.

There are all sorts of simulators around that visitors can attempt. I wanted to try them all. Jim and I got into the Blackhawk Helicopter simulator only to discover after about 5 minutes of coaching from the attendant that “simulator” is geek speak for video game. We failed miserably. I think the attendant is still giggling. We didn’t hit anything. And she gave us extra time. We are video game failures. You can see us in deep concentration in the photos. We were desperately trying to figure out which button to press and what those little squiggles on the screen really mean. An epic failure. I give kids in the military lots more credit now that I see what they do.

Kermit, Gene, and I went on the G-Force simulator which is just that spinning ride at the carnival where the floor falls away while you are spinning. It was fun but kind of a letdown. Kermit didn’t like it much.

We are traveling with folks who do not value government involvement. Fair enough. So it is interesting to look at Huntsville’s history. It was a sleepy cotton town along the Tennessee River. In the late 1800s and early 1900s mills opened to process cotton into fabric. By the 1930s this business started to peter out, finally completely leaving town in the 40s. The place was evidently a ghost town. After WWI even the local military base was scheduled to close. So the town leaders got together and figured out how to encourage the US government to open a rocket research center. They succeeded and this German guy named Warner, previously Hitler’s rocket inventor, came to town to help found a rocket center. In the 1960s when Kennedy said we were going to the moon, the folks at the rocket center looked at each other and said Uh oh. Huntsville and the Marshall military base suddenly became the Marshall Space Center. Much of the discovery and development of the space program came out of Marshall.

This place is home to the Saturn 5 rockets that were invented/perfected at Marshall Air Base in the 1960s with Warner and his team of US and German scientists. The Saturn 5 is named Saturn 5 because it has 5 huge engines that fire simultaneously to propel the rocket away from earth. All created at Marshall. The big rocket is the prototype that was used for experiments and as a model to build more. There is a cool exhibit/simulator with video showing the first test of all five engines at once in the 60s with President and First Lady Johnson present. You hold on to a bar and stand on a big pad under an engine and feel the vibrations. So cool.

They had the original moon transport equipment: 

 This is a photo of the Apollo 16 space capsule. The real one. Not much room for 3 men in it.

 The moon flight was pretty complicated.

This is a  moon rock. A real one.

Margaret joined us in the Saturn 5 room to guide us through the building. We would have missed 90% of the interesting stuff if we tried to tour it alone. In addition to the info about the development of the Saturn 5 rockets, we saw the actual simulator John Glenn used to prepare for the Mercury orbit around Earth, and all sorts of simulators, equipment, and space capsules associated with the Apollo missions. We especially liked the actual Apollo 16 space capsule on display so you can see how the hot re-entry impacted the bottom of the space capsule. Also on display is the Airstream camper that the Apollo astronauts stayed in for several weeks following arrival back on Earth to protect the world from space germs. Only 3 remain. This one was found in an Alabama state park a few years ago where it had been used as a Fish and Wildlife office in a state park.

These are some photos of Kermit and Deanna getting in and out of the Gemini Space Capsule Simulator. The actual one that John Glenn used. I went in it too but didn't stay too long - too claustrophibic.

After the Space center we were hungry so we checked our new favorite pamphlet, 100 Dishes to Eat in Alabama Before You Die. We found a BBQ place on the way back to the marina that was on the list – Gibson’s BBQ. The ribs were the best. I had pulled pork and bbq beef. It was really good.

And Then What

We stayed at Ditto’s Landing while in Huntsville. This was a nice marina, very pretty, and with very … country looking folks – reminding us that we are in Alabama. Bless their hearts. We decided to stay an extra day on Sunday to rest. It was heavenly. Kermit and I went for a bike ride and we all cooked dinner and ate on our own boat.

While at Huntsville we had a great shared dinner on Friday evening after Jack Daniels. We cooked chicken, and everyone contributed something. It was delicious. We laughed and drank and ate until we were exhausted. Such a nice time.

We left Ditto’s Landing and Huntsville on Monday morning 11/5/12 arriving at Joe Wheeler, where we started our Chattanooga journey two weeks earlier. We met up with Michael and Judy on One September. We had another great group dinner on One September.

Before dinner we pointed out a tumor we noticed growing on Rusty’s cheek. It started as a little bump a few days earlier and now was noticeable bigger. We commented that we needed to get Rusty to a vet to get the tumor checked. Joy and Jim said that is not a tumor. That is a tick!! Good Lord the dog had a tick. We had no idea what to do. This has never happened before. So Jim stepped in to help. I donated my tweezers and got the peroxide. Jim grabbed that tumor at the base right by Rusty’s skin and pulled really hard, really fast. Off comes the ugliest looking critter I have ever seen. I almost got sick. Rusty was a little startled at the attention but he was fine after a cookie or two. Ick. It was disgusting.

As we went to be that evening, I patted Rusty’s head goodnight and felt ANOTHER tumor on his head. OH NO. WHAT THE HECK! So we tried the technique Jim and Joy taught us. Kermit held the tweezers close to his head and pulled. Nothing. It wouldn’t budge. So we looked at each other. I didn’t have a clue. So we called Jim!! He came over and pulled the sucker off Rusty. Another ugly tick, full of blood. The sucker. Then Jim showed us how to apply the K9 Advantix that arrived in the mail a few days earlier. This will protect Rusty from future problems with ticks as we go further south. Poor fellow. He is such a trooper.

Sorry but no photos of the ticks. Just take my word for it. 

Tuesday morning 11/6 (Election Day!?!) we traveled to Florence Marina. Since there were no other loopers we had the courtesy car all to ourselves. So we toured Historic Florence and went to dinner at another one of those restaurants mentioned in 100 Dishes to eat in Alabama Before You Die, Ricatoni’s. It was ok. We stopped for ice cream (despite the cold) at another place on the list, Trowbridges, famous for their Orange Pineapple ice cream. I’m sorry, it was not better than Tofts.

Election night we spent pretending nothing was going on. Kermit went to bed early (about 7:30am) since it was dark and we needed to get up early to drive back to Joe Wheeler to pick up a package. I heard the others talking on One September late in the evening, watching the returns on Fox TV. I kept up with a blog privately and very quietly. I fear today, Wednesday 11/7 will be a long, sad day for the rest of the group.

Wednesday 11/7/12 we are off to Agua Marina near the head of the Tenn-Tom and the Tennessee Rivers. We will fuel up and prepare for the next leg of the journey, the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway. It should take us two weeks to get to Mobile. We plan to be there a few days before Thanksgiving, if all goes well. Until then, happy or sad election to you, depending on your point of view!!