Southern States Road Trip Day 3: Huntsville and Lynchburg

I'm writing the day after because once we got home and got settled it was pretty late.

We started Wednesday in Huntsville, AL. It was really warm, I was a little disappointed in weather.com, our supposed "hottest" day was actually the coolest and our "cool" day was the warmest...go figure.

We went to the Davidson Space Center where they just opened an exhibit of the Saturn V rocket. They had a model outside, which was gigantic, and a real un-used rocket inside. It was spectacularly huge, it was hard to capture in the photos, definitely a must see! We also toured the rocket park and original museum. The rest of the space center just needs a bit of an update and it could be really cool.

Saturn V rocket, trying to get perspective on how big it was!

Models of the space shuttle Pathfinder and the Saturn V rocket

We then drove for about an hour to Lynchburg, TN to the Jack Daniel's Distillery, after an amazing lunch of McDonalds! That part of TN is really pretty and the distillery sits in a really beautiful "holler," as they call it. We took the (free) tour and learned all about the history of the area and Jack himself. The distilling process was really similar to the bourbon tours we've seen, but they run their still through 10' of charcoal which they say gives it it's smoothness. They also barrel age the whiskey, like bourbon.

4 stages of whiskey, the clear stuff is 140 proof!

The top of the 10' charcoal process, we took a whiff of this stuff (140 proof), pretty strong!!

The distillery is in Moore county which is a dry county so they were not allowed to give any tastings, but we did buy a commemorative bottle, they were only allowed to sell this.

We drove home after the whiskey tour, with a quick stop to get a stamp at a civil war battle ground in Murphreesboro, TN. It was a lot of driving but a fun day overall. Now it's back to reality until I leave for my audition at FSU with my good friend Jon, hopefully more to post then!