Tennessee, November 22 & 23: Machine Falls, Jack Daniels | |
In Lynchburg, everything is Jack Daniels. | |
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WEDNESDAY, 11/22/21: Machine Falls & Lynchburg
John, a high school acquaintance, recommended staying at Tims Ford State Park. It is near Lynchburg, a QT that I had highlighted in my Gazetteer. The town of Lynchburg has its own campground. Originally, we were going to stay there. However, Lynchburg’s campground is first-come, first-serve. There may, or may not be an opening. So, when I found an opening at Tims Ford I quickly reserved it.
John was right. It is a beautiful campground. The campsites had quadruple the elbow room that Harrison Bay, our last state campground, provided. The forested hollow is impressive. There are tons of nice trails. The reservoir is on the smaller Elk River, not the industrial Tennessee or Cumberland Rivers. And guess what? This time I didn’t book a handicapped site!
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Tims Ford State Campground. | |
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As soon as we plopped V-Jer down, we drove off to Tullahoma, another town that I had highlighted as a QT. Downtown Tullahoma wasn’t much to brag about, but, jeez, what a nice clean well-kept town. Next to Dayton, Tullahoma is a paradise. The houses are maintained, the yards are spacious, the grass is mowed, the trash is picked up, the toys are put away…. I could go on and on.
After a while, we noticed that the street-light poles had rockets attached to them. Wanda looked it up. Sure enough, Tullahoma is a big aerospace research town for the Air Force. The X-43, a hypersonic plane capable of flying at Mach 7 was developed here. It was unpiloted, and I don’t know if it ever flew outside of a windtunnel, but Mach 7 is fast (about 5,300 mph or 1.5 miles per second.)
Just north of Tullahoma is the Short Spring State Natural Area. It is just a tiny speck on my Gazetteer, but I had it highlighted. I must have read something positive about it.
Since Tullahoma doesn’t have any junky areas, we didn’t think Google Maps could play any pranks on us. We were wrong. There wasn’t anything where Maps insisted the natural area was located. Disgusted, we drove on another half mile down the remote road and stumbled across a tiny dirt parking lot with about eight parking spots. The only sign posted at the parking lot stated “if the parking lot is filled, come back another day.” We found a spot.
We found a little box with some maps of the area. There were a dozen trail loops that led to three waterfalls. Machine Falls was the first one. The entire natural area was deeply cut up into several hollows. The trails were steep and difficult, but the area was gorgeous.
The trail to Machine Falls petered out at the bottom of a steep hill with a fast running creek. A crude sign pointed up river to reach the falls. There wasn’t a trail, only the creek and a near vertical hill. Our choice was to walk in the creek or try to defy gravity and claw our way along the hillside.
The creek had a fair number of rocks to hop on, but not enough to keep your feet dry. We tried the hillside. Slowly and carefully, we picked our way to the falls. Was it worth the effort? A resounding, yes. Machine Falls is a wide cascading falls, much larger than we expected from such a modest creek.
We hiked the next loop to Adams Falls. After an arduous trek up and down hollows, we came across the tiniest little trickle bearly dribbling over a rock ledge. As overwhelmingly amazing Machine Falls was, Adams Falls was amazingly underwhelming. We skipped the third falls.
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The bridge is the end of Machine Falls trail. We had to adlib our way the rest of the way to Machine Falls. | |
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Lynchburg, our next target, is a short distance from Tullahoma. It is the home of Jack Daniels Tennessee Whiskey, and it is a genuine quaint town. Jack Daniels is the worlds best-selling whiskey. Tiny Lynchburg is the only place it is made.
With a workforce of 700 employees, and a world-wide distribution, it is safe to assume that small town Lynchburg, population of 6,300, is a company town.
Tecnnically, the town of Lynchburg is more like a population of 600. Lynchburg’s government consolidated with the Moore County government, so now, Lynchburg is basically all of Moore County. This greatly inflates Lynchburg’s population.
Anyway, downtown Lynchburg is laid out in the traditional court house in the middle, and a square of shops surounding the court house. Everything made and sold in Lynchburg is Jack Daniels related. There is the whiskey burger, the whiskey chocolate shop, whiskey ice cream, the Jack Daniels General Store selling all things Jack Daniels, except Jack Daniels whiskey. Ironically, Moore County is a dry county.
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Jack’s descendants started the General Store when the distillery was closed down for Prohibition. Currently, it survives as a giant gift shop for Jack Daniels. | |
The front of the Town Hall. | |
The back of the Town Hall. | |
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There is a tiny craft distillery, the American Craft Distillers, just off the main square. We were too late for a tour of Jack Daniels, so we stopped in at American Craft for a sampler. Wanda liked the Apple Pie Moonshine. I liked the Tennessee whiskey.
A word about the samples. When we sampled the bourbons at a craft distillery about a month ago, I was amazed at the ample size of the samples. When the bartender at American Craft brought out her microscopic thimbles, I almost busted out laughing.
Tomorrow, we tour Jack.
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Jack Daniels’ rival in Lynchburg. | |
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THURSDAY, 11/23/21: Jack Daniels
In 1875, freed slave, Nathan “Nearest” Green, became Jack Daniel’s first master distiller. Yes, there was a real person named Jack Daniels. Jack left home at age 7. He was taken in by a minister moonshiner. Nearest Green ran the still for the preacher, so when Jack, at age 16, took over the moonshine business he kept Nearest in charge of the still. (The minister’s flock gave him an ultimatum - either be a moonshiner or a minister. You can’t be both.) A decendant of Nearest Green has worked at the distillery ever since.
The tour, at $20 ($16 for seniors) for the “dry” tour, turned out to be far more interesting than we thought it would be. The tour leader gave a thorough mix of fact, science, myth, and lore. We saw every inch of the process, from the spring water source, to the charcoal making, to the distilling, to the barrel making, to the aging in barrels, to the bottling. Except for the barrels, it is all done on site. The barrels are handmade at two nearby plants.
The property has a pleasant mellow whiskey aroma permeating the air. These vapors are called the “Angel’s Share”. Up to 15% of the whiskey escapes through evaporation. A black “whiskey fungus” covers a lot of surfaces around the facilities, especially the trees. We learned that revenuers would look for this whiskey fungus to help them locate illegal stills.
The “tasting” tours were $30 and $35, depending on whether you sample from bottles or directly from the barrels. After seeing the microscopic samples we got last night at the craft distillery, I thought I’d just buy a bottle of Jack when we get home to obtain a proper sampling.
We are planning on cooking a Thanksgiving meal in V-Jer. We needed a pie for desert. Although we couldn’t find a pumpkin pie in any of the local stores, we knew where we could get some apple pie. Apple pie moonshine, that is. We picked up a bottle of the Apple Pie Moonshine from the American Craft Distillers. That will make a terrific Thanksgiving desert.
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A statue of the 5’2” Jack Daniels. | |
Jack Daniels is on the historical registry. | |
State law dictates that all Tennessee whiskey must be filtered through charcoal. Jack Daniels makes their own charcoal out of sugar maple wood. They buy the scrap maple wood from a couple of local furniture factories. | |
Stacked wood is burned under these two smoke stacks. | |
These large charcoal chunks are reduced to smaller uniform chunks. | |
The smaller uniform chunks. | |
The finished charcoal is stored in this black tank. | |
The underground springs that Jack Daniels taps to make its whiskey. | |
The black whiskey fungus from the Angel’s Share vapors grows on everything. | |
It is amazing that all the Jack Daniels whiskey sold everywhere in the world is made here. | |
An early “staff” picture. Jack Daniels is wearing the white hat. | |
According to legend, this is the safe that killed Jack. Apparently, Jack couldn’t open the safe. Out of frustration, he kicked it. He fractured his foot. It festered. Gangrene eventually killed him. | |
The ingredients: corn, barley, rye, yeast, and water. | |
Jack Daniels’ Christmas tree. | |
The story of Jack and Nearest. | |
Glossary of terms used for newcomers: 1) V-Jer. The name of our camper. 2) Saturn. The name of our Van. 3) Duende. Our mischievous gremlin that breaks things. 4) Tata. The good gremlin that helps us fix Duende’s dirty work. 5) The Black Hole. This is what we call Walmart because every time we go in for just a couple of items, we come out spending way more than we figured. 6) QT. Quaint Town. 7) Little Buddy. This is what we call our Dyson cordless stick vacuum. | | | | |
