Today we moved on again, heading south on our way to Chattanooga. Our intention was to make our way down to the George Dickel Distillery to check it out and then move on from there to the Jack Daniels Distillery. We made a stop on the way through at the Stones River National Park - the site of one of the largest and bloodiest battles of the Civil War. Over New Years Eve day and night of 1862 and New Years Day of 1863 the Confederate and Union armies met and fought on the edge of Murfreesboro. Over 80,000 soldiers fought and at the end of New Years Day more than 21,000 were unable to answer their roll call.
The park was set up really well and at the Service Centre the boys were each given an educational information booklet with questions based on age levels. The incentive to complete it was a Junior Ranger badge and/or patch if enough of the questions were answered.
We ended up touring for a while, reading information boards, finding specific graves in the cemetery and generally taking a lot more time than we had planned. I found the cemetery amazing, it was one of those ones you always see with all the headstones in their perfect lines and all the same. I did find a small section on one edge of the cemetery where the headstones were a little different. Turns out they were soldiers who had fought and been killed (or died after their return) in the First and Second World Wars.
The National Park was an interesting place. Hard to imagine now the devastation it saw in those fateful hours. We weren't able to get around to every information stop so the boys were a bit upset that they might not get their badge or patch. When the Ranger heard we were all the way from Australia (and I may have added that the kids were shattered we couldn't do it all and they mightn't get their badges) he kindly gave them both their badge AND patch and swore them in as Junior Rangers. The boys were thrilled and Craig and I thought it was pretty cool when the ranger explained that there are only 5 parks in America that give out the metal badges. (Considering we hadn't even planned on going there in the first place - Score!).
This took up a lot more of our time than we'd been planning so we headed straight from there onto Lynchburg and Jack Daniels.
Very pretty drive through there. It was the first time we'd seen any of the big red barns they always show in "country American" movies. There were a LOT of horse studs in the area, but I realised that we were realistically pretty close to Kentucky there (and as it turns out, the Derby was on that weekend).
I was surprised to find that the Jack Daniels tour was actually free. A really interesting tour. They bus you up to the top of the property and show you the Rickyard (where they produce the coal that they filter the whiskey through). Interestingly it is considered bourbon until they do this filtering process. From there it was a wander down to the natural spring that drew 'Jack' to the place, through the original office - complete with safe that "killed" him, then into the actual processing areas. In this section you saw the mash that's created, the fermentation process, distilling of the 140 proof alcohol, the mellowing process through the coal and then into one of the barrel houses and the packing area.
We went into Lynchburg for a late lunch - really quaint place. Funny to think that this is a dry county. As the guide on our tour said, laws mean that they are allowed to sell you a nice decanter and it's just lucky for you that it comes filled with liquid.
From here it was onto Chattanooga. Completely forgot about the time zone change so we lost an hour on the way through which kind of stuffed us up a little. Bad experience trying to check in with this hotel - definitely the worst one we've dealt with.