Tennessee Day 1: Lynchburg

We are exhausted. But it has been a really fun day! We had to get up super early this morning to get to the airport in time for our early flight. My sister, Kelly, was not amused when we came to pick her up at 4:30. Yikes! The good news is we made it on time with little complaining from our back seat ;-) We met up with my dad and grandma at the airport, checked in, and were pleasantly surprised to be able to go through the “handicapped” security check point since it was easier for Grandma to use a wheelchair in the airport. It was almost like being able to go to the front of the line at Disneyland… almost.

We arrived in Tennessee and Dave and I broke from the family group for a day and headed to Lynchburg to take a tour of the Jack Daniel’s Distillery; the only place in the world where they make Jack Daniel’s Whiskey. The tour was really interesting and it was fun to learn about how “Jack Daniel” started making whiskey, how he started the distillery, how he lived and died and how they make/brew/distil the whiskey into the unique “Tennessee Whiskey” style. Fun fact of the day: the JD Distillery is located in Moore County, Tennessee, which is a dry county. They do NOT sell alcohol anywhere in the county, except for the commemorative bottles at the distillery. Go figure.

After our tour we headed to our friend, Mark’s, house where we will be staying for the rest of our trip. Dave and Mark have been friends since high school and they also worked together in the same research lab (and even shared an office) during college and now Mark has graduated and got a job in Tennessee. On the way to Mark’s there was some HEAVY fog on the roads. I hate fog, especially since I was in a fog-related car accident back in 2008. I let Dave do the driving and tried to just fall asleep, hoping to wake up when it was all over. That seemed to work well for me :-).

We got to Mark’s and headed out to have dinner. We had a really nice time at dinner and we enjoyed the grand tour of Mark’s beautiful new 4 bedroom house. I can not wait until the time comes for us to buy a house! It makes me 5really excited for our future!

Well, I’m off to bed. There is a two hour time difference here so getting up at a decent hour in Eastern Time will be hard for us. But we have an exciting day planned in the Smoky Mountains so it will be worth waking up for!