Category: Gap Year Continues in the US of A

I have realized, after all these years, that from time to time I need to take Janeen to a garden very so often. So after heading out after or Jim Beam adventure we made for Nashville and the Cheekwood Estate & Gardens.

Once the family home of Mabel and Leslie Cheek, this extraordinary 1930s estate, with its Georgian mansion and 55 acres of cultivated gardens and expansive vistas, today serves the public as a botanic garden, woodland sculpture trail, and art museum.

After getting parked, we starting walking around first visiting the Trains – this exhibit was wonderful – an enchanted woodland theme with fairies and waterfalls, miniature worlds and trains running throughout the exhibit!

Certainly puts a smile on your face as one person said as we walked towards it. From the Herb Garden.

Herb Gardens are of course Janeen’s favorite having spent 5 or 6 year as a docent in the Herb Garden at the Huntington Library.

It was a nice display, not a lot of plants as compared to the Huntington, but well presented. This garden displays herbal plants that can be grown in Middle Tennessee. There are plants to touch and smell, to use for cooking, fragrance, dyes, fibers, and cosmetics. Next up was the Dogwood Garden.

Unfortunately the dogwood plants were past the bloom but one could certainly imagine how it might have looked just a few short weeks ago.

As we continued our walk we ended up at the main house just as a docent lead tour was starting.   The origin of Cheekwood, as a concept, is traced to a family story involving Mabel Cheek making sure her husband, Leslie Cheek, Sr., kept his word to build a bigger house that could hold a gilt mirror, too tall for their current home in the 1920s. Cheek allegedly told his wife, “I suppose we will have to either sell the mirror or a build a house to fit it in.”

After reciting these options, the couple set out to combine their tastes, interests, and family names “Cheek” and “Wood,” the maiden name of Mabel Cheek, into the design of a grand estate, to be called “Cheekwood.”

Just like William Randolph Hearst did when building Hearst Castle in California, they went to Europe with buckets of cash and bought stuff – furniture, pieces of building (doors, stair cases, fire places – you name it and they bought it), art and everything they could think of.

This ended up being part of their new home.

The house was completed in about 1933 and lived in until around 1957 when the family donated the entire estate to the City of Nashville resulting in a wonderful place to visit.

Bourbon – Whiskey – stuff made in Kentucky that people drink a lot – that was the mission today. First stop, Jim Beam Distillery

for a tour and tasting. Located just off interstate 65 south of Louisville is the place where they make a LOT of this bourbon. Our tour started at 9:30 and lasted about 90 minutes.   They have been making whiskey since 1795 – ok, there was a break because of that stupid law in the 20’s – but basically continuously for over 200 years.

Here’s the deal, we are not bourbon drinkers – scotch is more to our liking. However, the process is really very similar. Start with a “secret” mix of corn, rye and barley malt

– add some Kentucky water and let it ferment for a while. The natural yeast of the barley creates the fermentation lasting several days.

Once complete, the mix tastes like a rich beer. This beer travels into a 65-foot tall column still. Heated to about 200 degrees – enough to turn the alcohol into a vapor but not so hot that the beer boils. The vapor then turns back into a liquid. This resulting “low wine” is about 125 proof. From the column till, the low wine flows into a ‘doubler’, similar to a pot still, for a second distillation. When the vapor condenses into what’s then called “high wine” it’s less then 160 proof.

After distilling, the high wine is put into brand new charred oak barrels – always new and always American oak. The oak barrels are toasted to what is called an “alligator char” that is they are fired enough that the insides take on the scaly, bumpy look of a gator’s skin.

The law in Kentucky says you have to age in barrel for 2 years.

The basic “white label” Jim Beam that is sold worldwide gets aged for four years. Some barrels become ‘special’ and age longer resulting in different blends and labels and of course a price impact.

During the tour there was an opportunity to create your own bottle – well, not really, you got to “rinse” the bottle,

put it on the line for filling and then once filled and the wax installed you got to personalize the wax. This was on the single barrel line of the Knob Creek Bourbon. Needless to say I did this.

After our tour through the both the small batch processing buildings and through a portion of the big building we ended up in the tasting room where we sampled three different products.

Janeen and I sampled several

but decided the one we liked was Baker’s. This is not for the faint of heart for sure, as it is 107 proof and according to our guide, Olivia, most like a scotch. This is small batch bourbon and aged 7 years. It is named after the grandnephew of Jim Beam. Janeen also liked the Basil Hayden’s another small batch bourbon. Both of these could find it’s way into our drink glasses.

Just down the road from Jim Beam is Forest Edge Winery.

Sure, wine in Kentucky you say.

Well big surprise, they IMPORT all of the grapes from California, Washington and New York in refrigerated trucks. Wine was OK – nothing really special although we did pick up a bottle of the Rose for later consumption.

While at Forest Edge, we asked the guy in the tasting room, Josh, where else we might visit. He suggested stopping at Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest

just down the road. We did, drove around the area and enjoyed the lovely forest, plantings and

wild life. Founded by a German immigrant, Isacc Bernheim,

the place as been around for a while resulting in a 600-acre arboretum with over 8,000 varieties of trees, shrubs and other plantings.

It was a nice break in the otherwise world of alcohol.

 

Today we headed out of Cincinnati towards Maysville Kentucky. My dad grew up in Maysville along with his brother and adopted sister until he went to the University of Kentucky and then to the US Naval Academy and never really went back except to visit.   Along our way we drove through Ripley Ohio, where my dad was born, and then over the Ohio River to Maysville.

Maysville, located along the banks of the Ohio River, might be the County Seat (Mason County) but it still only has maybe 9,000 residents and I’m sure it was even smaller when my dad was growing up. Along the banks of the River there is a 10 or 15 foot wall built to protect the downtown area from flooding – which it has been know to do over time.

On the edge of the outer Bluegrass Region,  Maysville is historically important in Kentucky’s settlement. Frontiersmen Simon Kenton and Daniel Boone  are among the city’s founders. Later, Maysville became an important port on the Ohio River for the northeastern part of the state. It exported bourbon, whiskey, hemp and tobacco, the latter two produced mainly by African American salves before the Civil War.   It was once a center of wrought iron manufacture, sending ironwork down river to decorate the buildings of Cincinnati, and New Orleans.

Maysville was an important stop on the Underground Railroad, as the free state of Ohiowas just across the river.   Abolitionist author Harriet Beecher Stowe visited the area in 1833 and watched a slave auction in front of the court house in Washington, the original seat of the county and now a historic district of Maysville. She included the scene in her influential novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, published in 1852.

One of the most famous people from Maysville, at least in more modern times, is Rosemary Clooney – you know, George Clooney’s Aunt?

They hold a music festival founded by the singer at the local theatre and have the greats like Debby Boone, Rita Coolidge, Michael Feinstein, Roberta Flack, Alison Krauss, The Pointer Sisters, Michael Bolton and Linda Ronstadt have performed.

We stopped at Parc Café with a signpost

indicating the distance to Athens, Versailles, Paris and London all located along the river in Ohio and Kentucky! Fascinating world we live in.

After lunch we drove out to the ancestral home, Leewood.

My grandmother took Janeen and I to this place when we visited and mentioned that the balcony between the twin chimneys was a spot from which the owners fought off an attack from the Indians. The house and land was purchased in the late 1700 by General Henry Lee

and was held in the family for an extended time. On the hill behind the house is the family gravesites with a number of my ancestors are buried with their families.

Many of the graves are unreadable – but some are still very clear.

After visiting Leewood, we drove further along to Versailles , thoroughbred horse country ,to meet up with my cousin,

Bonnie, who I have never met! It was neat to meet my dad’s sister’s daughter and her husband Frank.

On Monday we left Macomb and started our journey towards Savannah Georgia. Our first stop was in Cincinnati where we decided to spend a full day just enjoying the sites along the Ohio River. After a night at the hotel, on Tuesday we headed out to discover the Riverfront Park. On the way, however, we find The Theodore M. Berry International Friendship Park.

This park was completed in 2003 along the Ohio River just east of downtown, and is has a number of sculptures and flora representing five continents and also featuring a riverside bike trail and walking paths.

Named for Cincinnati’s first African-American mayor, it serves as a lasting tribute to world unity and global understanding. The design of the park drew its inspiration in part from a child’s friendship bracelet. Two intertwining walkways guide park visitors through gardens of the continents in a perpetual celebration of international peace and friendship.

It was a nice start for our day.

 

From there we went further along the River and parked across the street from the Smale Riverfront Park Opened in 2012 this park features a number of play areas, water features, walking paths, adult porch sized swings with great views of the river and Kentucky on the other side and a Labyrith.

This delightful park has a variety of sections with lovely flowers, water features, play and exercise areas and generally a nice way to spend some time along the river.

Over the river, is the John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge that looks a lot like the Brooklyn Bridge in NYC. Built in 1866 it links Kentucky with Ohio.

A neat feature of the Park is the worlds largest Chime Foot Piano. This one-of-a-kind structure was designed and built by Cincinnati’s Verdin Company. Sensors under the piano keys electronically cause the strikes at the top of the structure to ring the chimes. Janeen had a good time tapping out a tune.

 

After playing in the Park, we headed out for some lunch and a brew. Finding our way to Moerlein Lager House we had a wonderful lunch, a few brews and great views of the Ohio River. It was hard to leave this lovely spot but we felt a walk would be a good idea and headed off to the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center.

 

The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center is based on the history of the Underground Railroad. Opened in 2004, the Center also pays tribute to all efforts to “abolish human enslavement and secure freedom for all people”.

The center’s principal artifact is a 21 by 30 foot, two-story log slave pen built in 1830. By 2003, it was “the only known surviving rural slave jail,” previously used to house slaves prior to their being shipped to auction. The structure was moved from a farm in Mason County, Kentucky,   where a tobacco barn had been built around it.

Throughout the Museum are various displays and artifacts focused on slavery and the fight the struggles of slaves to reach freedom. Several films were presented depicting various portions of the struggle.

A well built place with lots of history to discover.

Wednesday we packed up our necessary stuff and headed to Macomb Illinois. The road takes in some interstate as well as sections of the National Road – Highway 40. Thus we have both a four-lane expressway experience and two land winding road through the countryside. It was getting along lunchtime and we pulled into a lovely spot – Braddock Inn and Restaurant.

We had a delightful lunch and headed back on the road. However, immediately next to the place was the General Braddock Grave – part of the Fort Necessity National Battlefield. Well, since we have been talking about Braddock along the way, we pulled in and walked around.

 

On June 25, 1755, the largest army assembled in North America up to that time passed through the area that is now the Braddock Grave site. British Maj. General Edward Braddock led the first 1,400 soldiers of his 2,400-man army. Braddock followed the trail originally blazed by George Washington in April 1754. The trail at that point was nothing more than a marked path through the woods.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In order to move the all the British Troops and supplies, the trail was widened to about 12 feet and cleared of all trees and materials. Braddock’s goal of expelling the French from Fort Duquesne (present day Pittsburgh) was thwarted when his advance troops collided with a force of French and Indians.

Although the initial exchange of musketry favored the British, felling the French commander and causing some Canadian militia to flee, the remaining Indian/French force reacted quickly, running down the flanks of the column and putting it under a murderous crossfire. Braddock’s troops reacted poorly and became disordered. The British attempted retreat, but ran into the rest of the British soldiers left behind from earlier. Braddock, rallying his men time after time, fell at last, mortally wounded by a shot through the chest.

Braddock was borne off the field by George Washington and Col. Nicholas Meriwether and died on 13 July from wounds suffered in the battle. Before he died Braddock left Washington his ceremonial sash that he wore with his battle uniform and muttered some of his last words, which were ‘Who would have thought?’ Reportedly, Washington never went anywhere without this sash for the rest of his life, be it as the commander of the Continental Army or with his presidential duties. It is still on display today at Washington’s home on the Potomac River, Mount Vernon.

On July 14, what remained of that once proud British army hobbled past present day site of Braddock’s grave retreating from their disastrous defeat at the Battle of the Monogahela. The retreating troops camped near hear and Braddock died that night. He was buried under the road, in an unmarked grave, to keep it from being disturbed by Indians. In 1804, workmen repair this section of the Braddock Road discovered what is believed to be Braddock’s original gravesite.   His remains were then reinterred on the hill and a granite monument was added in 1913 to mark the grave.

Few remnants of the Braddock Road remain but it was originally the first ‘highway’ to the west. This route eventually became Maryland route 49 and Virginia route 620. Now it follows along Highway 40 in many sections.