Maker's Mark Distillery

      After finishing up at the Corvette museum around lunch time, we had about 5 hours to kill before dinner.  Bowling Green wasn't exactly a hotbed of activity, so we decided to visit one of Kentucky's famous bourbon distilleries.  The Kentucky Bourbon Trail is comprised of six distilleries, forming a "L" shape from Louisville to Lexington: Woodford Reserve, Four Roses, Jim Beam, Wild Turkey, Heaven Hill, and Maker's Mark.  I have tried 3 of the 6, and Maker's Mark is by far the best tasting one I've had.  Naturally, the Maker's Mark Distillery is the only one that is nowhere near a highway, but most of them didn't offer tours on Sunday anyway.  The GPS estimated a 90-minute drive and 3:00 pm arrival time, a half-hour before the last tour of the day.  We decided to skip lunch and hit the road towards Loretto, Ky, home of Maker's Mark.
      It didn't take 90 minutes to get there, it took 110, and that was despite my complete ignorance of speed limits.  The back roads to the distillery were long and windy, and I navigated them to my own limits of safe driving.  We had actually passed the Heaven Hill distillery about 30 minutes earlier on these back roads.  We arrived with only 15 minutes before the last tour started.  Visitor's parking was easy to find, but I saw no signage directing us to the tour starting location.  Knowing time was running out, I did come across a sign for the gift shop, and quickly headed there to get information about the tour.
      The gift shop was nicely decorated with wood paneling and a bar.  I saw what appeared to be a tour group gathered in the bar area.  I figured this was the 2:30 tour wrapping up.  I asked the girl at the register about where the last tour starts.  She told me that the last tour of the day was finishing up right behind us.  My mind raced, but I quickly put two and two together and understood what had happened.  On the way from Bowling Green to Loretto, we had passed from the Central Time Zone back into the Eastern Time Zone, losing an entire hour.  That explained why the GPS changed the estimated arrival time to 4:15 at some point during our trip.
      Utterly disappointed, I couldn't be upset with either the distillery or myself.  I spent enough time researching the distilleries online, yet I did not come across any indications that the time zone was Eastern.  I would hope that such a message would have caught my attention.  Unable to turn back time, we decided to look around the gift shop and see what was there.
      My dad bought a bottle of whisky and hand-dipped it in the trademarked red sealing wax himself.  While his bottle cooled, he went over to the bartender and shared our sob story regarding coming from Baltimore yet missing the tour.  The bartender was sympathetic and offered us the samples the free tour would have entitled us to.  That was a nice thing to do, and did ease the pain of having missed the tour a little, although if I could have seen the tour and skipped the samples, I wouldn't be disappointed in the least.  We got our tokens commemorating the trip, and samples, too.  It's unlikely I'll ever get back there, so I'll see what's available online to learn more.  After 30 minutes, we headed back out to drive down to Bowling Green.  I watched my cell phone throughout the trip.  We entered the Central time zone ~10 miles from the Corvette museum.