playing tourist

We finished our "work hardening" days at Amazon and are getting ready to move to our normal shift of 10 hour days, well actually it's 10 hour "nights" in our case. We will report for work tonight at 5:30 and get off at 4:00 am. I sure hope we are ready and can handle the standing, stooping, lifting and bending!

On our 3 days off we decided to be tourists and check out some of the local area. We took a nice drive through the winding back roads to this place.

We took a great tour and learned a lot about distilling "spirits". Here is our tour guide Lindsey.

Both of us are fans of the TV show Moonshiners and now understand a little more about what they are doing when they are "cooking the mash". :-)

One little tidbit I never knew was the distilling process releases a "mold" that attaches to the wood of the buildings, fences and surrounding trees leaving a black residue. They say it is not harmful to humans or the trees but it is the reason they paint their buildings black. :-)

They age the liquor in charred white oak barrels for around 7 years.  The barrels are stored in a large 4 story warehouse where they are moved from the top floor to the bottom over the course of the 7 years.

Once the bourbon is aged it moves to the bottling room where it is bottled, capped and hand dipped in their signature wax sealing process.

The last stop on the tour was the tasting room where we sampled their product in different stages. Cheers!

The first was pure moonshine watered down to 90 proof. Then we tried their aged Bourbon and some that had aged too long. Frankly my tongue was pretty numb after the moonshine so the rest of the samples were more for fun. :-)

To regress a little bit, Sunday evening we were watching TV when Rudee lost a cap from her tooth. Luckily she didn't swallow it and have to go "searching" for it the next day or two like our buddy and fellow fulltimer Steve did at FOSJ. :-)
I called a dentist first thing Monday morning before leaving for the distillery and got her an appointement for Tuesday. The appointment was for 11 am and we had to hustle a little to make it on time since our sleep time is still a little screwed up. We walked in the door at 10:58 and I was a little worried. The office was pretty fancy inside with ornate wood desks and trim. Oh, oh this may be a little more expensive then we had hoped.
Rudee started filling out the paperwork and someone in the waiting room said "Hi, Phil and Rudee". Needless to say we were a little surprised that someone would know us here in the waiting room of a dentist in Kentucky. Turns out it was co-worker and fellow fulltimer Karen http://wishuponanrvstar.blogspot.com/. We have been "blogger buddies" for awhile now and she is working the same shift and area at Amazon ... cool!
They re-attached Rudee's cap in short order and only charged us $25! What a deal! Should any of our readers happen to need a dentist while working at Amazon in Cambellsville, check out The Smile Center.

Once we were done at the dentist we checked out some of the other campgrounds that Amazon pays for their workcampers to stay at. We are happy where we are at, it is quiet and fairly close to work and shopping but we wanted to see the others too. The nicest commercial one is about 17 miles from town, large level sites, WIFI, and even a large buried storm shelter for bad weather but 34 miles round trip several times a week just doesn't work well for us. The local State Park is also on their list and is a wonderful park with paved sites, WIFI and sits right on a lake. Beautiful! The downside is they do not have sewer hook ups. Amazon pays for a pump out service that comes in once a week but since we have our own washer and dryer in the rig it just would not work well for us.
While at the State Park we looked up Larry and Betty who had arrived last week end. I have followed their blog, Mountainborn for quite awhile and we have swapped emails from time to time but never met face to face. They were home and we sat out on their patio sharing stories and had a great visit. We were soon joined by Karen and her husband Al who had worked the sugar beet harvest with Larry and Betty. Small world we live in! :-)
Tuesday evening we checked out the local movie theater. They have 6 screens and we chose to watch Last Vegas. The movie was entertaining and we had a fun "date night". :-)

Today we are both being lazy and trying to rest up for our first long shift. We should be OK but I'm sure we will be tired once it's over. I'll keep you posted.