The Horse Lords of Kentucky

Rolling through the mountains of Kentucky, we turned east into a country of whiskey, horses and basketball. This was our first Groupon vacation, an anniversary gift spun into a night at a bed & breakfast in Versailles (rhymes with “ales”), a town on the outskirts of Lexington. We left the interstate for the hills and crags off of the Bluegrass Parkway, with plenty of liquid gold and history throttling our way.

A detour in Bardstown gave us an idea of which distilleries we needed to stake out. The 1792 Distillery gave us the first glimpse of what awaited. Black warehouses surrounded the distillery. In Lawrenceburg we got lost during our search for the Buffalo Trace Distillery. Tours ended at 3 p.m.

As 2 p.m. approached, we had no sign of the facility. We got lost in Lawrenceburg; I missed a signed for Four Roses and we up prowling around downtown, looking for a visitors bureau office that didn’t seem to exist anymore.

A quick call to the distillery remedied that. Despite a raucous crowd on an area party bus and a tour guide who grew increasingly annoyed at talking over them, the place was pure class. The Spanish Mission-style buildings stood out from small-town Kentucky structures that surrounded them.

Four Roses has aging facilities elsewhere and varies from the Kentucky norm. It only goes six barrels high in a one-story barn, eliminating barrel variation. Four Roses has a storied history, most of it overseas. Distilled since the 1880s, Four Roses survived Prohibition due to its on-hand whiskey supply. Four Roses spent the past few decades growing into the top-selling bourbon in Japan.

In 2002, domestic sales resumed, and Four Roses has blossomed into a mighty brand. Retaining its perch in Japan, Four Roses has spread out with a number of special whiskeys. Using a number of proprietary yeast strains and blends which include rye and other malts, the whiskey is smooth in all its facets

An unpaid endorsement.

They tasted us on their standard whiskey, their Small Batch and their august Single Barrel, the smoothest of the trio. I splurged on a Single-barrel bottle available exclusively at the gift shop. Bottled at barrel strength after 11 years of aging, this Four Roses rarity was quite smooth despite its explosive alcohol content.

Up the road, we passed the black barns where the whiskeys of Wild Turkey aged. After a drive in the wilderness, including a surprisingly narrow, curvy bridge spanning the Kentucky River gorge, we arrived at Versailles, a stately small town with a health downtown Beyond that strip  and above a forested park sat the Versailles Inn.

The B&B was quite lovely, and had a long history. Only a B&B for a year, it opened in 1876 as the Versailles Female College, later becoming the Cleveland Home, a school for orphaned girls, for 122 years. After a hearty dinner at the B&B's charming restaurant, our first food of the day, we found a slow road into Lexington.

White horse fences cordoned off immense fields, and a handful of thoroughbreds tempted the heat to graze peacefully. Any town could take cues from a visitor-friendly town like Lexington, which promotes its equine culture heavily. As well it should – fearful of losing the rolling horse-filled acres to development, the city dove into a smart-growth plan that preserved its character.

Until we arrived at the dense city center, the rural look dominated. For all we knew, once and future champions could have grazed in those fields. We detoured for a stop at West Sixth Brewing, then headed back to Versailles as the sunset bathed the hills in soft pink and violet.

Arriving back after dark, we each had few drinks in the quiet room. Never opening the cabinet housing the television, we soon dozed on the hard bed and slept soundly. Daylight came too quick and I struggled to leave the ultra-comfortable bed. Fortunately Nancy headed for a shower first so I could struggle with sleep a little longer.

I would be amiss if I left out the soap. In the rooms, the Woodford Inn stocked Joe’s Bars and Suds. A local teen named Joe concocted the goats’ milk soaps and other fresh ingredients. The inn’s materials mentioned Joe developed it as a 4H product. I bought three more for the house. When I inquired about buying some at the counter, the breakfast cook shook his head and said, “That boy is going to be a millionaire.” Given the high quality of his soap, I can only hope to help his fledgling empire.

We filled in the breakfast portion of our stay with a fine pour of coffee and eggs. Then, we headed north to fulfill another capital stop. An hour north of Versailles, we sloped down into the Kentucky valley for a look at Frankfort, Kentucky’s capital. High bluffs overlooked the government buildings.

One of America’s smaller state capitals, Frankfort brimmed with the friendliness we met elsewhere in Kentucky. While pumping gas, the man next to me struck up a conversation about the heat. He seemed incredulous when I mentioned that Tennessee ranged 10 degrees warmer during this furnace blast. At the old capitol, which fell to the Confederacy briefly during the Civil War, stood a statue of William Goebel, the only sitting U.S. governor ever assassinated. Twice this year, we visited capitols taken by the Confederacy (Sante Fe the other) then quickly recaptured.

Quiet capitol ensconced in the Kentucky hills.

Old capitols out of the way, we crossed the Kentucky for the modern version. An intricate frieze topped the columns guarding the main entry. To its flank sat the governor’s mansion, which used Marie Antoinette’s villa as a model. Fountains surrounded the expansive gardens and hanging flower baskets in ancient trees.

More than most of our stops, Frankfort played the part. I prefer from government buildings on the weekends. When else can Nancy and I wander through such massive places without another soul in sight?
 While wandering these capitol grounds, we didn’t see anyone. We had these expansive gardens and beautiful stone structures to ourselves. I could not have been happier. Frankfort almost seemed like a wide spot in the gorge the Kentucky River cut. The small town seemed like it might one flood away from being reclaimed.  The capitol was just blocks from the river; it divided the capitol campus from many of the old government buildings plotted on the other bends.

Another treated waited on the land high above the river. Atop the bluffs, we meandered through the city cemetery until we found a beautiful spot overlooking the capitol where Daniel Boone and his wide were interred. The legendary frontiersman, who first the first trails and manned early forts in colonial Kentucky, kept eternal vigil over Frankfort.

The Boones' soaring tombstone.

Quite the view for a final resting place.

 Legend says that Missourians sent another body back to Kentucky, but the pioneer’s monument was impressive. The stone slab honored his wife as much as it lauded Boone’s pioneer attitude. The Boones’ final resting spot owned a view worthy of envy. Goebel's grave was among the larger monuments elsewhere in the cemetery,

The heat had driven us out of the horse lands. Before returning to Tennessee, our route hit a pair of modest pioneer homes turned into national shrines. We were trading tombstones for a birthplace. From the north, we stopped at Abraham Lincoln’s boyhood home, where the family lived for five years. A strenuous hike into the hills above the homestead would have to wait for cooler months (and for the rattlesnakes to go into hibernation).

I've always found it interesting that both Lincoln and Confederate President Jefferson Davis were born in Kentucky. Davis got an obeslisk in southwestern Kentucky, Lincoln's birthplace earned a marble sarcophagus. 

Has any inauthentic cabin ever received the treatment of Lincoln’s birthplace? The National Park Service carbon-dated the wood and found it dated to the 1840s, not the 1809 vintage its owners touted. However, they kept it as a symbol and style of the home the Lincolns would have inhabited in the Kentucky wilderness.

Extreme cabin preservation

 The cabin has been encased in marble vault on the original cabin’s site, high atop a stately hill. We trotted up the 56 steps that to the marble chamber, a combination of mottled stone from Connecticut (exterior) and Tennessee (interior). A chatty ranger filled in some blanks from the Lincolns’ story. The air conditioning blasted as we walked in a little monument that hosted five presidents in its 102 years.

Relief from the heat waited at the bottom of the hill. The spring that drew the Lincolns to the property still flowed the steps leading to the underwater creek, a burst of exhilarating cold air. Next to the underground creek, I shivered and the sweating would resume as soon as we left the little stone vault framing the Lincoln family’s water source.

From Lincoln’s birthplace, we plowed deep into hill country dotted with farmland. The heat burned the land into an unhealthy brown. Piebald cows clustered tightly beneath water-starved trees. Even here, Kentucky cut a complex character and debunked those who would casually deny it any positive attributes.