Fall Creek Falls State Park/Jack Daniels & Cumberland Caverns

     On Friday 12/5/2014, we departed Nashville and headed for the Cumberland Plateau and Fall Creek Falls State Park.  This park is the largest in Tennessee and encompasses around 26,000 acres.  The park is pretty quiet this time of year, but during the summer months it is jammed pack full of tourists.  We planned on spending 4 days at the park, but we had planned plenty of activities to keep us busy if the weather is lousy.
     Friday night the rain started around 8:00 PM and continued throughout the night, and into the next day.  So after breakfast, we headed over to Lynchburg for a tour of the Jack Daniels Distillery.

 The tour is free, unless you want to take the tour that includes a tasting for $10.  Since we had a little drive to get home at the end of the day, we passed on the tasting.  The tour lasted about 1 hour, and we got quite a tour of the distillery. The distillery is located in Moore County which has been a dry county since Prohibition.  But the politicians allow Jack to sell bottles in their store on the property.  If you want to purchase it other than there, you'll have to drive a few miles down the road into the next county.   In the grotto behind me is where the special water used to brew Jack comes from.  It looked pretty clean....up to the point where we noticed some ducks swimming in the creek.  We all know what ducks do in the water don't we ????  Maybe that's what makes Jack taste so good!  At the end of the tour we passed by this Christmas Tree on our right.

They were going to have the official lighting later on that evening, but we didn't stick around to watch.  It was a fun day, and would recommend this stop if you're in the area.
     On Saturday, we had a special treat in store.  Last year when we passed through this area, we toured the Cumberland Caverns over near McMinnville, TN.  At that time we found out about their program called Bluegrass Underground.  What we discovered were music programs happening 330' underground in the cavern's Volcano Room.  We had seen that the Gibson Brothers from Chateaugay had played there last year, but we were unable to get any tickets.  While preparing for this trip, we found that Kenny Loggins would be performing with his band Blue Sky Riders.

 So we scored some tickets, and adjusted our trip to be here for the concert on Sunday.  And we weren't disappointed!  They put on a rocking program for nearly 2 hours, singing only 1 classic Kenny Loggins song.  There are 3 members in the band, and all 3 are prolific songwriters and performers in their own right.  It was pretty remarkable being 330' underground, at a concert.  But even more remarkable was the median age had to be on the positive side of 60! After checking out their website, we discovered that the age group they generally play to runs between 54 & 65.

Kenny's voice is still strong, and he generally seemed to be enjoying himself. They all seemed to be enjoying themselves, including the audience, as they played to several encores after their show.  This is an event that we would definitely recommend and you can find out more information about Bluegrass Underground by following the link above.
     Yesterday was cool but clear, and Debbie and I decided to tour around the park and see what it had to offer.  We walked over to see Fall Creek Falls which drops 256 ft.

The sign there claims it the highest waterfall east of the Mississippi, but I'm not quite sure that's true.  But I'll have to do a little fact checking on that.  We had a great picnic lunch, enjoying the crisp Fall day.  We passed a few deer enjoying themselves along the roadway, not really concerned that we were watching them. All we saw were does, but some park workers told me there's a nice 9 pointer with about a 2' rack running around.  Another fact that needs a little checking out??

We paused and watched a American Eagle catch a fish in the lake there.  He sat quite a while along the shoreline enjoying his catch before flying off.   After touring the park, we stretched out at our camp, made a nice campfire, poured a little whiskey over ice, and enjoyed our peaceful surroundings. It really has been our only chance for a campfire the entire trip, and we stayed out late as the fire died down.  Don't we look comfortable???
      Today we departed Tennessee and worked our way south into Alabama where we will meet up with our dear friends from our old California BP days, the Hamptons.  We had the fortunate opportunity to get to visit with nearly their entire family last year, which was a special treat, and we had to get together again this year on our way south.  So we are going to barge in, just a few weeks before Christmas, and hopefully not make a pain of ourselves.  It should be a good time.
       Debbie and I were looking at the weather report and noticed that another snow storm is headed for NY.  We really do feel so fortunate that we are able to escape that cold weather, and travel south for the winter.  We're hoping everyone has a great Christmas Season.