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

I loaded up my little 250 with overnight gear, and was set to meet a fellow ADVrider at a campground attached to Wayne National Forest for some serious trail riding Tuesday morning. Unfortunately, I had serious tire trouble, and didn't arrive till around 1pm. He also didn't have an ideal morning...he missed a turn and rode 40 miles out of the way... and was hit by a car in a parking lot. Yup, you read that right! Needless to say, some trail riding to forget the morning was in order for both of us!
This was my first attempt at loading up my little bike, and it worked out very well (tire trouble was unrelated). My large camping duffel bag (with sleeping bag, tent, sleeping pad, and a change of clothes) strapped to the luggage rack, and I strapped my small trail bag (with tire tubes, tire irons, tire pump, tool kit, folding saw, rope, and first aid kit) on top of that. It didn't take up any seat space, and was hardly noticeable when riding. The bike had no issue taking the major roads, and cruising between 65 and 70 miles per hour.
I met Chaz at Begley's Campground in New Straitsville around 1pm. He rode a Suzuki DRZ400 with almost the exact same packing setup. We threw our tents together, strapped our trail bags back on the bikes, and hit the trails at 2pm.
The Monday Creek section of Wayne National Forest has around 75 miles of marked trails. It differs from Perry State Forest Trail System in two significant ways:

• Perry is more of chopped up sections of trails, and is much more technical (with steep hills, mud pits, and some tighter trails). Wayne has 'flow'; longer and wider sections of trail, that are much less technical. Perry uses almost exclusively first gear... Wayne utilizes almost all second and third gear. There were not many sections I would be hesitant to take my big bike on.
  
• Perry is free with a Ohio License Plate, whereas you must purchase a permit to ride Wayne, whether you have a license plate or not. Our two day trip was going to cost half as much as a year pass, and because the year pass is per person (not per bike) I decided to buy in. Now I can take either bike whenever I want... and the closest sections are only an hour from my house.

So at 2pm we hit the trails. We rode the New Straitsville connector from the campground to the New Straitsville loop. After taking the long way around the loop, we took the Main Corridor Trail south. We took the Williams Connector out and back, and then the Snake Hollow Trail. We eventually took the Main corridor trail to the end at the Dorr Run Loop. We turned back here, looking forward to playing around the Door Run Loop tomorrow. We blasted back up the Main Corridor Trail, and after many picture stops and breaks (and one longer delay when we attempted to help a KTM 2-stoke rider with a fouled plug), ended up riding about 45 miles of trails in about 4 hours.
We headed 2 miles north of our campground to Shawnee to fill up our gas tanks, pickup some campground snacks (of the alcoholic variety), and grab some dinner. We ate at Desperado's bar a grill, where we enjoyed inexpensive happy hour beverages and a fantastic pizza. We highly recommend this place! Shawnee is a very neat historic looking town. It reminded me of gold mining towns out west. Unfortunately, it appears mostly vacant and is aging rapidly.
Back to the campground, we finished a few beers, and hit the sack around 10:30. It was a cool night (low was supposedly in the mid thirties, but I was never uncomfortable. It warmed up quick in the morning, which was welcome. At 10am, we hit the trails once more!
This time we quickly blasted down the Main Corridor to the Dorr Run Loop. Things got a little confusing as we played in this area. In an attempt to keep track of where we've been, I tried to pull the map out and figure out where we'd been at about every other intersection. Unfortunately, I didn't carry a writing utensil, so our exact route will forever be lost in the dust. I can say, we rode about 65 miles of trails this day, and landed back at the campground just before 3:30. We hit small bits of Door Run, the Timber Road Trail, the Bowl Trail, the Paramount Loop South, the Purdum Loop, the Deer Stand Loop, a couple dead end legs and these:

The 1985 Loop starts wide and graded, but ends with the best hills we found. Fantastically rocky, and just the right amount of challenging. It also has nice views of the new US-33 Nelsonville Outerbelt. It is a difficult to explain feeling; riding a trail along a hillside, looking down at the traffic flying by on an interstate.

The Mine Shaft Trail was muddy, tight, and technical. This trail reminded me of Perry... All first gear, and tacking one obstacle after another. A day of this type of riding is taxing and difficult, but mix some of this in with the rest of the wider flowing Wayne, and it's great!

In the end, we made it back up to Shawnee for gas with around 80 miles on our bikes, and my low fuel light had been on for about 17 miles. Interestingly, both our bikes took almost the exact same amount of gas... I'm talking, within .004 gallons of the same exact amount. I only netted about 42 MPG on this tank... which is the worst mileage I've ever recorded on this bike... but it was 70 some miles of 6000-9000 RPM in second and third gear, constantly abusing it.

I 'went down' once, but it was early in the second day and I was riding sloppy. I locked up the front wheel in an area that I had no business being on the front brake. A simple low side... All good... No bike damage, and only a small bruise on my left hip (about the only un-armored part of me). We both dropped the bikes a couple times when negotiating mud holes and/or logs.

Honestly, I know of more difficult 'trails' (abandoned roads) in both southern and northern Ohio, than what exists at Wayne... but Wayne allows you to ride seemingly endless dirt for as long as you can stand it. At only 1 hour and 5 minutes (riding the speed limit) from my garage door, I will be back soon.