I believe it was the very next day, after returning home from Louisville, I get a text from my father about a ride the next weekend. I think I'm free, so why not. He texts back some crazy idea about visiting a Distillery and Mammoth Cave. I laugh it off, assuming it was some sort of snide remark because he wasn't invited on our previous trip.
The next day, the girlfriend is pestering me about what we're going to do next weekend, being a holiday and all. Gears start turning and a glaze comes over my eyes. Light Bulb. The next weekend is Memorial Day Weekend. Which means it's a 3 day weekend. Which means, perhaps my dad wasn't joking! And he wasn't!
My brother is in, my dad is in, I'm in, and eventually I convince the girlfriend to join us (sigh, women), and a plan is set in motion. I revisit AirBNB, and find a small house (!) to rent, this time, in downtown Lexington.
Because of how great a guy I am, I put my Make-A-Passenger-Backrest plan into fast forward, and the Friday before our trip I get it welded, painted, and installed.
Saturday morning we all meet up, and eventually head south. Being the only efficient option (outside of the interstate), we once again head down US-62. And being the obviously more enjoyable option, we once again cross the Ohio River on the Augusta Ferry. My brother, riding my dads newly acquired V-strom, decided to make the trip more entertaining by continuously dropping pieces off his bike. First it was a license plate bolt... not a big deal. Then it was the center stand... kind of a big deal. And finally he dropped one of his side boxes... definitely a big deal. Each part was easily dealt with on the road, but it was a bit comical. After the ferry is where the route changed from last week, still, small meandering roads took south until we rejoined US-62. Russell Cove road was our last long stretch, which took us through endless horse farms and rolling hills into downtown. We bee-lined it for the Visitors Center, and made it just before closing. With maps in hand and a new level of knowledge/confusion, we headed to the house.
The place was about 2 miles from the center of town, and, while comically small, served it's purpose exceptionally well. We walked back downtown, and began, what became a long and drawn out process, looking for dinner. One place after another seemed to have fancy food. Unnecessarily fancy. Like, why must every burger have 6 ingredients I've never heard of, and cost fifteen bucks? One place after another had us saying, does anything on this menu sound good? I guess we're just not fancy-food-eating types. Don't get me wrong, I'll try anything, and I'm sure most everything would've been great, but, well, you know... moving on.
We find a place, and end up ordering 4 flatbread pizzas and splitting them. We walked around a bit and visited a bar downtown before hopping the free trolly up to a brewery closer to our house. We ended up back home, and all crashed for the night fairly quickly.
The plan the next day was to ride to a distillery (Makers Mark is the right direction) and proceed to Mammoth Cave. First, we visited a breakfast place that came highly recommended. I hate being mister negative... but the food was, to me, just way to over the top again. So now we had a later start. We made it to Makers Mark, and took the distillery tour. It was enjoyable, but nothing particularly special about it (after taking the previous tours). In the end, if you buy a bottle, you can dip it in the signature red wax yourself. Unlike Jim Beam's do-it-yourself bottling feature, Makers offered a lesser expensive option, so I opted to give it a go. We all had a good time, but quickly realized we weren't going to make it to Mammoth Cave in time to see anything. Instead, we opt to zig-zag back to Lexington, while hitting every other distillery on the way. Most will be closed for the afternoon, but we no longer needed to take a tour, the distillery grounds are simply worth stopping to see. We headed to Heaven Hill first, as it's just up the street, and made it in time to get in, but too late for any tastings. A quick walk around the store, and glance around the campus, and we moved on. Next stop was Four Roses, followed by Wild Turkey.
Back in Lexington, and hoping not to revisit last nights finding-food-fiasco, we do a bit more research this time. I found the perfect place, a local bar and grill, highly recommended, and with normal food! It was a heck of a walk, but was to be well worth it! Until we got there, and they were closed on Sundays. As were several other places near by. We find an open bar, and learn that this is normal here, Lexington mostly shuts down on Sundays. Great. Eventually we find another dinner option, and got a good meal. We headed back to the bar for a round, and then walked back to the house.
The next morning we headed out early, but shortly after leaving town, we find a Waffle House! Holy-Moly-Big-Piles-Of-Normal-Amazing-Food!!! I'm not saying it's better food than any of the fancy stuff we had, but it sure hit the spot more so! Give me a giant waffle! And next to that, a pile of hashbrowns, and cover it with stuff! But not stuff like the previous meals; fancy masticated, drizzled, long words, unknown things, mystery stuff... stuff like, Chili! And Peppers! And Cheese and Onions! MMmmmmm down home, stick to your bones, buttery sugary chili-y goodness.

What the heck was I talking about?

Oh, so then we rode home. The end.

Kentucky Bourbon Trail Ride Planning Page

For a sort of 'guys-weekend', I headed to Louisville with George and David to check out the town and visit a few bourbon distilleries. We stayed in a downtown apartment we rented from Airbnb.com, walking distance to the bars and restaurants.
We left Columbus Saturday morning, headed down US-62, and crossed the Ohio River on the Augusta ferry. Arriving in Louisville around 3pm, we quickly realized that the short hours of the distilleries were going to stifle our big plans just a bit. The only one open late enough for us to visit was the Evan Williams Bourbon Experience, in downtown Louisville. We hit the Visitors Center on our way, and made it in time for the last tour of the day.
The Bourbon Experience was more of a touristy, history of the brand and how Bourbon is made tour, rather than a large scale distillery tour. It did end with a few tastings, and was a good time. If you've done other distillery tours already (especially the parent company, Heaven Hill), then this one may not be worth your time. Since it was our first tour, we enjoyed it thoroughly.
From here we began our task of earning our Urban Bourbon Trail T-shirts and certificates. To do this, you must visit at least 6 bourbon bars in Louisville. Not a difficult task, but also not cheap... for me at least. I suppose, if you were so inclined, you could simply ask for a stamp from the bars without ordering drinks, or perhaps only ordering a cheap beer of some sort. But I felt, in the land of Bourbon, on a Bourbon Trail trip, I wanted to drink the drink of the land. I tried one or two different featured bourbon cocktails at each stop. In Louisville, this generally meant about $10 per drink. In most bars, beer was over $5 a glass anyway; we weren't in hole-in-the-wall bars here.
Speaking of the bars. I'm not exactly sure how to put this next part. But Louisville was... well... let's just say, we didn't fit in, anywhere we went, in Louisville. Every place we entered was either too fancy, or, too trendy. I'm fairly confident, in all the bars we went to, we were always the only ones in T-shirts and/or non-skin-tight jeans. One after another, it was white table cloths and a fancy (old) band, or freaking hipster havens. Nothing wrong with either per say, but it would've been nice to have found one bar that, the next day, we wanted to go back to. Also... all the bar tenders were dudes. Again, nothing exactly wrong with this... but, well, nothing right with this either. DOWN WITH DUDE BARTENDERS!
Where was I? Eventually we had dinner. I tried the Hot Brown, a famous Louisville plate. It was delicious, and small. I could've eaten two, easily. We all left dinner hungry, not good when we're spending the night out drinking hard liquor.
We finished our Urban Bourbon Trail goal and headed back to the apartment. We picked up a case of beer on the way back, and ordered 2 large pizzas when we got there. The pizza was amazing, as was the sleep. It was a long day.
Day two, we're up early for some reason, but moving very slow. The plan was to hit a bunch of distilleries, but a priority was the Buffalo Trace Distillery in Frankfort. It's unfortunately not on the official Bourbon Trail, but absolutely worth the visit. The tour is free(!!!) and fantastic. If you're ever in the area of Frankfort or Lexington, this should be a must do! After the long ride to the distillery and the lengthy tour, we were once again stuck without enough time to get to another distillery before they all closed up (mid-afternoon). We decided we could make it back to Louisville in time to catch the last tour of the Louisville Slugger Factory. We made it by about 5 minutes. The tour was enjoyable, even for non-baseball-loving folks.
We weren't so excited about hitting all the bars this evening, so we walked to a brewery-restaurant not far from our apartment. We ordered the flights, to try all of their beers. As is fairly typical, I didn't find a new favorite beer, but I enjoy trying local and new beers, so it was a good time. As is not typical, we left, once again, wishing we got more to eat. Another case of beer and 2 large pizzas was in order for the evening.
The next day we headed south to visit the Jim Beam distillery. This place was huge, and the tour was very hands-on. The monster assembly lines were incredible. The tastings were done with fancy electronic cards and dispensing machines. They had around 20 products to choose from, but you were only allowed two tastes, with no option to add more. Unfortunate, I would have gladly paid a few more bucks to try a couple others that sounded interesting.
On our way home we passed right by Wild Turkey, but it was late afternoon so they were already closed. The rest of the ride home was uneventful, and we got back around 9pm.

On this trip, I learned that I don't mind Bourbon one bit. It's not my beverage of choice, but I can certainly drink it. I do think it all tastes just about the same though. There is a bit of a difference between wheat based and rye based bourbon, but reading these descriptions about "hints of vanilla and toffee in this one" always had me laughing.

Kentucky Bourbon Trail Ride Planning Page