Here are the results of our EV experiment.  My goal was to leave the house with a full charge on the "Bolt", and then do the entire trip and return to Lancaster without paying for another charge.  The experiment was a success!  EV owners are known for having range anxiety, "how likely am I going to have enough charge to get to my next assured charge".  I suffer with that, a little, even though I know that seldom am I further than twenty miles away from a charging station.  The extra twist on this trip was that I did not want to pay for recharging the "Bolt".  The best place to pick up that free charge is at hotels that have destination chargers.  Destination chargers are level 2 chargers (not fast, not slow, the "Bolt" generally needs to be plugged in overnight to get a full charge) and there is no cost to use them if you are staying at the hotel.  So planning the trip, and where you stay is important.

Even after you have planned the trip knowing that you have the range to reach the hotel and the hotel has destination chargers, things can still go wrong.  The chargers may not be working, or all the charger spaces may be full.  At one hotel they had four chargers, two general chargers and two Tesla chargers. The two general chargers did not work.  Fortunately, I have a device that converts my GM plug to a Tesla plug.  This device will not work at all Tesla chargers, but they do work for Tesla destination chargers.  We used the Tesla charger and all was fine.  At another location the hotel charged $10 per day for the regular charger but the Tesla chargers were free.  Again, we plugged into the Tesla chargers and all was fine.

So we did indeed complete this 1,000 mile road trip without purchasing a single charge other than what we left our garage with.  Gasoline prices in Kentucky during this trip was $3.59, had we been driving our "Volt" which is a plug-in hybrid, and assuming we stayed at the same hotels each night and plugged the Volt in, we would have spent approximately $43 for gasoline (the first fifty miles of each day would be on free destination charger electricity, as a pure hybrid the Volt gets about 58mpg).  An all combustion engine car getting 25 mpg combined highway and city would have cost approximately $150 for fuel.  

All this said, any savings we made on fuel cost, was lost in bourbon purchases.

The Bolt in front of our house, we made it.

June 16, 2023: Extra photos from Kentucky Road Trip

 June 16, 2023 Extra Photos from Road Trip

A Most Interesting Sculpture near Frankfort’s Statehouse…cannot take 

a photo without getting myself in it somewhere

                               A dog statue with his tennis ball…

                                    waiting for master  to throw it again 

                                            at the Cave Hill Cemetery 

A precarious but beautiful road to a distillery

Interesting trestle in the Kentucky byways

Friday night, Newport, Ky

Lyle Levitt concert across the street this evening 

Bourbon Trail: Distilleries, Cave Hill Cemetery, Black Rabbit Speakeasy

 We started the day by heading south of Louisville, beyond Bardstown and on to Maker's Mark Distillery.  Another beautiful setting and another good tour.  We have only done two full distillery tours on this trip, this one and Buffalo Trace.  Both tours were good and in may ways complimentary.  But if I had to pick one over the other, I'd pick the Maker's Mark tour.  That said, there is a charge for the Maker's tour and the Buffalo Trace tour is free.  Today's tour included the fermenting rooms which was a nice plus.  Also at the end of the Maker's Mark tour you get to "dip" your own bottle of bourbon in the iconic red wax Maker's seal.  

We also stopped by the Willett and Jim Beam distilleries.  Again well manicured and ready to sell us as much bourbon as we wanted

The Grounds of Maker's Mark

Maker's Mark Mash

Maker's Controlled Barrel Aging (the back wall is a limestone outcropping which keeps the temperature the same all year long)

Barrel No. 1.  Maker's First

Tasting Maker's 46

Sandy dipping her bottle of Maker's Mark

Me channeling James Beam

Willett Distillery

Future Pours of Old Fashioneds, Whiskey Sours and Straight pours into Glencairn glasses

Following the distillery visits, Sandy and I returned to Louisville where we picked up a box of Kentucky Fried Chicken and headed to Cave Hill Cemetery (a most beautiful cemetery with huge and elaborate gravestones).  Here is buried, Colonel Harland Sanders, the founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken.  We had a cemetery picnic of the KFC chicken at his gravesite, our way of honoring and thanking him.  We also visited the gravesite of Louisville native and boxing legend Muhammad Ali. 

Tonight we went to the Black Rabbit speakeasy for cocktails and small bites.  This was a unique bar that maintained its speakeasy roots in every way that it could.  To get in, you enter a small room and knock on the back of a bookcase, the bartender opens a small peep hole, we identify ourselves and then he opens the hidden door which is the bookcase.  Our bartender, Austin, was an accomplished mixologist who was proud of his own twists that he has included in some of the cocktails.   

The bookcase and little secret door

What is the password?

Why it is all worth it.

Bourbon Trail: Elizabethtown, Louisville Bats Baseball, Distilleries, Pin + Proof Speakeasy

Joey, a friend of ours, recently loaned the movie "Elizabethtown" to us.  Sandy and I really enjoyed the movie and decided to include a side trip to Elizabethtown, which is about 35 miles south of Louisville.  The town is small with a pleasant redeveloped central square (actually more of a circle).  The town really does look just like in the movie.  We walked around the central square and visited the Elizabethtown City Cemetery, both sites had featured scenes in the movie.  

This was in a scene from the movie

Cemetery was a site in the movie.  This is where they buried the blue suit.  

This is also where Morgans Raiders fired their cannons into the city during the Civil War (Battle of Elizabethtown)

One of those canon balls still embedded in a wall in a building on the square.

From Elizabethtown we headed back to Louisville where the triple A baseball team, the Bats ( a Cincinnati Reds affiliate), were scheduled to play the Saint Paul Saints.  Louisville Slugger Field is one of the great minor league parks in the country.  It is a beautiful field, in a beautiful setting right on the river.  Watching the game, enjoying a dog and a soda, there is nothing like a weekday afternoon game at the ball-yard.  The weather was a perfect; 81 degrees, full sun, a pleasant breeze.  Sandy found it a little hot, and spent a good amount of the time in the air-conditioned clubhouse eating nachos and enjoying a cold drink, that worked too!  There were plenty of television screens throughout the clubhouse so that she could keep up with the game, ... you know ..., if she cared to.

Ready for the game to start

Sadly the home team lost big.  Saints 10, Bats 3

We visited two downtown distilleries after the game, "Angels Envy" and "Evan Williams".  These were both just retail visits, but I did learn a little bit about each, and of course, picked up a bottle at each place.  Sandy even got into the purchasing program by picking up a bottle of Evan Williams Honey, a sweetened bourbon, and also a tube of bourbon flavored chapstick.  Who comes up with this stuff?  And, is the police officer really going to believe the alcohol on her breath is coming from the chapstick she is wearing?  We have started running into some of  the same people at different distilleries we are visiting.  It has occurred to me that they may have a drinking problem. 

World's largest continually pouring Old Fashioned

Purchases to date (sans the chapstick)

We finished the day at the Pin + Proof speakeasy.  This is a fun place, a high end bar in the lower level of the Omni Hotel with a slightly hidden entrance.  The door, like any good speakeasy had a peep hole to allow the proprietors to identify those who want to enter.  But the most striking element of the bar are the four full sized bowling lanes.  The lanes are only slightly illuminated with the pins glowing at the end of the alley.  The cost to use one of these lanes is $125 per hour.  We chose to relax and watch others bowl in the dark.  

Pin + Proof Speakeasy

"New Old Fashioned" (what made it new was a spritz of Absinthe) and "Float & Sting"

Prohibition was miserable for everyone

To sell bourbon during prohibition it was designated "medicinal"

Treasury Certificate allows druggist to sell Whisky as medicinal

Bourbon Trail: Lexington, Mary Todd Lincoln House, Woodford Reserve, Claudia Sanders Dinner House

Mary Todd was born in Lexington, Kentucky.  At twenty she went to live with her older married sister in Springfield, Illinois.  It was there, at a dance, that she met a lawyer ten years her senior whose career as an attorney and politician was on the ascendant.  The Lexington house that the future first lady lived in from the age fourteen until her departure for Springfield is now the Mary Todd Lincoln House museum. 

It is a two-story brick structure with rooms now furnished with pieces from the period that she lived in the house.  There are also a number of Todd family artifacts, well-marked throughout the house.  It is a self guided tour but it is well posted with written information about the time Mary lived in the house and about the rest of her tumultuous life.  This was a good museum.  I learned a lot about Mary Todd Lincoln, things that I did not already know, and to some extent it reshaped my perception of her. 

The well-to-do home that Mary lived in from ages 14 to 20

The grounds around the house

Family Dining Room

Mary as First Lady

We drove on to Woodford Reserve distillery which has to be the most picturesque distillery in Kentucky.  We walked around the grounds, bought a small batch bottle of bourbon, and had afternoon cocktails on the  porch.  I'm not sure, but I kinda think this is what heaven is all about.

Woodford Reserve

So much bourbon, so little time.

One of the first patented recipes

Barrels on their way to be filled with the ambrosia of Kentucky

Heaven

Perhaps the most famous food in this state is Kentucky Fried Chicken, re-branded in 1991 to KFC.  After the Colonel sold the company he used that money to build his dream home.  After a while his wife (considerably younger than him) wanted to develop her own business.  So behind their dream home, he built the very large "Claudia Sanders Dinner House".  Sandy and I stopped there for a simple chicken dinner.  Chicken-Fried-Chicken, mashed potatoes, baked apples.  Probably what many Kentuckians have for dinner every Sunday afternoon.

The original Colonel

Kentucky's First Lady of Fried Chicken

The Sanders' dream house.

Still following the plan of having an all "free" electricity trip.  We moved from Frankfort to Louisville for another hotel with a free destination charger.  When we arrived we found that the hotel's standard charger was not working, at least not on our Bolt.  Fortunately, there were two Tesla chargers and I have a converter that allows me to charge the Bolt using the Tesla chargers.  So far, it is all working.

The white device is what allows me to use a charger with a Tesla Plug