Knowing that we wouldn't be able to go on any trips for the next few weeks, we decided to take a day trip somewhere and enjoy the weather. Lynchburg, Tennessee, population 361 (a little north of 500 now actually) is where we decided to go. What's there? Jack Daniel's distillery of course.

About an hour's drive South of Nashville, this small little town has been home to the world's most famous whiskey maker since the 1860s. Whiskey-making is pretty good business because they have one of the nicest visitors' centers I've ever been in and certainly when you consider the location it is first-class (the tour is also completely free). We took an hour long tour through the whole whiskey making process. We got to see it dripping down through the charcoal and got up nice and close to some sour mash. The history is fascinating and the characters that inhabit this little corner of the world are just like they are depicted in the commercials. One of the many oddities about all of this is the distillery resides in a dry county. They had to get the state legislature to pass a special law just to be able to sell commemorative bottle to visitors. After the tour, we took a brief walk around the town square. Other than the shops full of JD shirts and shot glasses, there wasn't much that struck our fancy so we started North to our next stop.

Maggie's class was studying the Civil War and we are both interested in historical things so we decided to stop in Franklin. Franklin is the site of one of the last and bloodiest battles fought during the Civil War. It is also considered one of the final nails in the Confederate coffin.

Our first stop was at Carnton plantation. This was a private house that ended up serving as the field hospital for the Confederates immediately following the battle. By all accounts, it was literally overflowing with wounded by the end of the night. Our tour guide was the resident historian and we definitely got our money's worth on details. He took us through the rooms and recounted quotes from people who were there that night. In many of the rooms, there had been so much blood that it had soaked through the carpet and stained the hardwood floors that are still in the house today. Most of the dead are buried in the nation's largest private military cemetary. This was one of the last major battles of the war and since the winning side obviously didn't see any reason to do anything special, the house's owners donated land, paid the undertakers, and took care of the cemetary until their deaths in the early 1900s.

The second stop in Franklin was the site of the Union line. The Carter House is still standing and the shed out back is the oldest surviving structure with Civil War damage in the country. There are over 1,000 bullet holes in the wooden shed (some rather lousy shots) and in the brick smokehouse behind the house. At this point, time was running out so we headed back to the airport to catch the last flight home and end our day. Luckily, it flew and so did we.