Our Travel Journal: 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.