Last Day of My Kentucky Trip

 

My last day in Kentucky started with a tour at the Buffalo Trace Distillery. Buffalo Trace is my boyfriend's favorite bourbon, so we were really looking forward to this tour. And it did not disappoint! Just like our previous distillery tours in Kentucky (check out those blog posts here and here), our tour guide was fun and knowledgeable. I didn't realize how many brands fall under the Buffalo Trace name, or that they're all made under five main mash bills (including one for rye products). That means all of the products are made of most of the same stuff; the name and cost differences come from how long it's been aged and where it was stored (at the top of the building, where it's hot, or at the bottom where it's cool). So Ancient Age and Blanton's really aren't that different!

We had the chance to visit several buildings on the campus:

This is where the barrels go after they've aged but before they're emptied.

It's hard to see, but the barrels are being emptied into this trough.
The trough is full of the bourbon as well as bits of char from inside the barrels.

Buffalo Trace has won many awards, almost like a sports team!

This is where the bottling happens. Every bottle of Blanton's comes out of here! And fun fact: did you know that each little horse on the top of a bottle on Blanton's has a little letter on it? There are eight total: B-L-A-N-T-O-N-S. And each horse is a little different, so it looks like a horse running the Kentucky Derby, with the "S" jockey holding up his fist in victory!

Then we enjoyed our tasting, which included some of their spirits as well as a cranberry lemonade cocktail. Yummy! And the next stop was the gift shop. They didn't have our sizes in most of their T-shirts (too bad), but we did end up buying a lot of liquor and other souvenirs. They sent us back to our car carrying a big cardboard box full of goodies!

After our tour and tasting, we left Kentucky and headed to Cincinnati, Ohio. We grabbed lunch to-go from the Cincy Gourmet Deli (probably the best food we ate during the entire trip) and then headed for the Cincinnati Zoo. We were already planning to visit Ohio for a baseball game, but when I realized that Fritz the baby hippo that I love seeing on Twitter is at the Cincinnati Zoo, I insisted we add the stop to our itinerary.

Here are some fun photos:

I'm shorter than a baby giraffe!

Fritz was sleeping in the corner of his enclosure, so I got a nasty glare on this photo.
But at least I can say I saw him!

This tortoise was loving his waterfall. It was like a cooling shower for him!

We loved watching the manatees eat! I don't think I've ever seen manatees in captivity before, so this was very cool.
And we could get pretty close to them (well, minus the glass). Such peaceful creatures!

We were only at the zoo for two hours, and we didn't get to see everything (we never even got to the botanical gardens!), but we needed to drop our things and the car off at the hotel before heading to the Mets v. Reds game happening that night. We relaxed for a few minutes in the room, but after that we walked over to the Great American Ball Park to check it off our baseball-stadiums-to-visit list!

They have an area called "DORA" outside of the ballpark where you can walk around with drinks.
It was such a pretty day, so we enjoyed sipping our beverages out there before the game.

This is a very cool mosaic inside the stadium. Imagine how long it took to make that!

The Reds' version of Mrs. Met!

We forgot to take a photo together at the game! But Steve was happy to support his Mets.

The Mets were losing by a lot at first, but then they hit several home runs and almost tied the game, so that was exciting! They ended up losing, but we still had a really fun time. We especially liked that it was "bark in the park" night, so people brought their dogs to the stadium. The Kiss Cam even showed people kissing their dogs! 

The next day we drove back home. We were sad that our trip was over, but our next vacation is right around the corner! Stay tuned for an upcoming blog post after I get back from my trip to Sarasota, FL!