Great week, with one small challenge

We just had a super week.  I've been wanting to try a couple things I've never had, one is a Vietnamese sandwich called a Banh Mi, and the other is Vietnamese soup called Pho.  Karen heard of a little place in Louisville that is known for their sandwiches, so the four of us, Karen, Tom, Jan, and I went over to give it a whirl.  It is Banh Mi Hero  Tom was our resident expert as he recently spent a year in Vietnam.  He said it was authenic and good.  We all thought it was fantastic!  The sandwiches are different from anything we had before, they were bright, spicy, crispy, and best of all, delicious!  Now I have to find the Pho.

Then on Wednesday, our friends, John and Diane came in to visit.  A good time was had by all.  They arrived in their spiffy convertible on a beautiful day.  I shoudd mention the hot, hot weather has eased and it has been gorgeous, low humidity, high 70's in the day and windows open 60's at night!

We went to visit one of Kentucky's renowned bourbon distilleries, Maker's Mark.  It was a lot of fun and interesting.  We learned a few things about bourbon, it has to be at least 50% corn, has to be made in America, is aged in new oak barrels that have been charred on the inside and are only used once, there are more barrels of bourbon aging here in Kentucky than there are people and there are 4.3 million people here!  Neat stuff.  The distillery is in a beautiful little hollow that has an excellent source of limestone filtered water available.

Across the bridge

Along Whisky Creek

The distillery from the outside, all 5 stories

Inside view of the bottom

The sour mash

Aging barrels

Applying the signature wax, by hand!

And now on to the most anticipated part of the tour!  The tasting.

Yum, yum!

One of the things you can do in the gift shop is dip your own bottle in the wax, so we all had to do it!

Diane suiting up

John getting ready

John dipping

Diane about to wax her bottle

Yours truly moving in

Success!

We had a good time, learned a bunch on a beautiful day, and got to taste some excellent bourbon!

And after our long grueling day we had to relax a bit in the evening as a couple hot air balloons floated by.

Trying to relax :-)

Diane taking a picture of the balloons

I'll tell you about our cargo tray that has a mind of its own later.  I don't want it to start acting up again.