Before going on the tour, I find a public restroom and decide I need to take a bath. This was something I'd yet to do on my trip. So I get out of my car the baby wipes and liquid sanitizer I bought for this specific occasion, go into the bathroom, strip down and clean. It's neither a complete nor beautiful experience, but it's a good substitute when your only other option is "keep being nasty."
Most of the building interiors of JD don't allow photographs, but the process explained was surprisingly interesting.
As a young boy, Jack Daniel learned to make whiskey from a preacher. As he got older he realized whiskey tasted a lot better when it was made from the water of a particular local spring.
What makes this spring water so special is that there's no iron in it. And so it continues today to be the water used in JD whiskey.
These pallets of wood are burned by JD employees, under what is essentially a giant chimney, all for the purpose of making charcoal. They do it themselves more or less for quality control: they don't trust an outside charcoal company to burn the wood with as much care as they do.
I don't recall exactly how the whiskey liquid itself is made. It's a process of mashing and mushing, and whatever else is traditionally done to make whiskey. But after it's made, JD drips every drop of whiskey through, if I recall correctly, 13 feet of the charcoal they made. It's a process meant to smooth the whiskey out. In the visitor's center they have 2 boxes: 1 with whiskey before this process and the other with it after. The after smelled more or less like normal JD, but the before smelled like tequila: that's a big improvement on smoothness.
After the whiskey is dripped through the coal, it's stored in barrels, also made by JD employees. Flavors may be added depending on the type of JD being made. After years of aging, involving moving barrels up and down from different levels of storage buildings like the one seen here:
the whiskey is finally bottled. Every drop of JD whiskey around the world is made through this process at a single facility in Lynchburg, TN.
The traditional tour of the JD facility is absolutely free, but for an extra 10$ you can take a tasting tour which ends with 3 1/3 shots of whiskey. 1/3 of normal Jack, 1/3 of Gentleman, and 1/3 of Single Barrel. Worth it for someone looking for the entire tour experience.
After visiting JD it's time to head to Graceland, the home and museum of Elvis. It's at this point it starts snowing. It's the first time on the trip I've seen snow actually falling, and every day since, as of 2/9/2014, it's snowed everywhere I've gone.
The first part of Graceland I visited was the home itself, and it is one hell of a place. It's got all the color and flair that you'd expect in the home of a man who's job was singing in rhinestone suits.
He also seemed to have a thing for fabric ceilings, which is something I'd never seen before but looks pretty awesome.
The home Elvis was born in: a humble beginning to a future super star.
I've always been somewhat a fan of Elvis. He's got plenty of songs I enjoy, but I've never really looked up to the man. When I reach the garage though, I start to realize that maybe I should:
Making a gun range out of a garage: that is exactly the sort of dangerous, stupid behavior that me and my friends would jump at the chance to participate in.
It's when I get to the trophy room I realize how much the man deserves to be respected as a musician. I knew he was good, but I didn't know he was THAT good. Awards and accolades from every music awarding company you can think of. There's video of him playing in the trophy room and I hear him say something along the lines of, "I think it's best that I always produced my own music. That way I don't have to worry about what the producer wants, I can worry about what the listener wants. I make the album and then ask myself, is this something I would listen to?" PROPS. TO. ELVIS.
There's then a hall dedicated to his acting career which mentions how he wanted to do serious roles but ended up getting typecast into musicals and romantic dramas. There are also dedications to his charitability. Elvis secretly gave money to many humanitarian organizations and paid off all sorts of bills for people in need.
Now let's take a moment to talk about Elvis's costumes:
He had a lot of them. The reason being, he attempted to make a new one for every live show he did. Very few were used more than once. That's a lot of dedication as an entertainer. He also had a lot of cars. Here's a fraction of them:
The pink jeep, by the way, was for Graceland guards to ride around in. I'm not sure how I'd feel about that from a Graceland employee perspective. But the piece de resistance is most definitely Elvis's private jet, the Lisa Marie:
It was at this point in the tour I decided to respect Elvis more than any other entertainer I knew. First off, most people who buy private jets get small private jets, not personal jumbo jets (although he had one of each).
But secondly, looks at the things he has inside:
A 24kt gold flaked sink. No one in the world needs this in their home and he put one on a plane. Of course there are all sorts of comfortable cabin areas and even a conference room. A video playing in the plane claims that he always had all types of alcohol to make sure flyers could have whatever type of drink they preferred. It also states that at one point his daughter mentioned she had never played in snow so Elvis and his entourage immediately flew to Colorado. His daughter played in the snow for a few minutes, and then they flew back.
And near the front...
A full size bed. All seat belts, including the one on the bed, are also flaked with 24kt gold. Elvis. Was. Awesome.
My day is nearly over. My first stop in the morning needs to be Little Rock. For the first time I think things through before hand: I'll head to Little Rock, try to find a rest area as close as possible, and drive the rest in the morning. Just a tip for future travelers: if you're looking for a rest area close to your destination and you find one an hour from it, don't risk going any further: that's probably as close as you're going to find one. Having found a Rest Area, I start to realize that Arkansas seems to have a disease...
When I started into Tennessee, almost everything seemed to be very secure. There were always police around, everything was clean and taken care of, and it in general felt kept up. When I got to Lynchburg, it was a nice, kept up town, but didn't seem to have as many police. And then, I got to Memphis, where Graceland is located. I think about avoiding Graceland parking to save 5$, but driving up and down I realize Graceland isn't quite as secure as the rest of Tennessee. The roads torn up. I stop to get gas and receive stares as well as having a man start walking towards me with that, "I need change" look on his face. Luckily he turns away, but I nonetheless decide to pay 5$ for parking. The point is, the closer I got to Arkansas, the more I felt like I might get stabbed.
The Rest Area I find doesn't have any security, which isn't unusual for the average Rest Area and really something I don't mind after the first night's wake up call, but it's also very dark. Most Rest Areas are very well lit for safety reasons, but not this one. It's also hidden behind trees to the point you can't see the interstate: that's a quality I've never seen in a Rest Area. It looks like exactly the type of Rest Area people who don't do drugs are warned against going to.
I've been eating off the same Walmart sandwich for 3 days now, so I decide it's time to sit down at an actual restaurant for dinner. All the nearby restaurants are local joints though. Feeling the area is sketchy already I don't particularly care to try a non chain restaurant, but I can't find any chain restaurants around and one of the local places, Coco's Dos, is Mexican, and I'm craving some Mexican food. I look at a Google street view picture: it-is-sketchy. It looks like exactly the type of place I'd get shot, stuffed with heroine, and smuggled across the border in a tailpipe. The Google score is amazing though, so I look through the reviews. One of them is, "Just driving through. Was very apprehensive. I'm so glad I stopped. Everything is great! I love it!" I feel better knowing I'm not the only person who thought this place looked suspicious. All the reviewers seemed to have survived though, so I go.
Upon arriving, I can't find the restaurant. Looking on my computer, Google maps places it correctly, but my GPS swore it was right across the road from where it actually was. The restaurant also wasn't named Coco's Dos. My first thought is, “Did they have some sort of Mexican restaurant turf war and this one burned the other one down?” Still looking suspicious, I continue in cautiously. Upon entering, a man ask me, “Just 1?” and I yell at him, “YES SIR!”
“Why did I do that?,” I think to myself.
“You can just pick a place.”
“ALRIGHT!”
And then I realize what's happened: it's been so long since I've had casual restaurant conversation I've forgotten how to control my voice. The rest of the night, every time I spoke to an employee, I yelled at them...
“What would you like to drink?”
“DIET COKE!”
“Is Diet Pepsi okay?”
“YEAH!”
...making me far sketchier than anyone else in the restaurant. After sitting down, it was clearly a normal place, nothing particularly dangerous about it; it didn't even have a bar. I decide to order some type of burrito that has french fries in it. I don't know who decided french fries in a burrito was a good idea, but everything else on it sounded good so I figured it was worth a go. After receiving my food I take my first bite...and it may be the best taste of food I've ever had. I don't know how good it really was, but clearly my taste buds had been deprived by eating nothing other than a Walmart sandwich. My only regret about going to the restaurant is that I couldn't eat more. I don't seem to burn as many calories traveling the road all day as I did going to work and working out afterwards, so I have a fair portion of food left. It doesn't matter though. I am full, and it was delicious: mission accomplished.
I get back to the Rest Area, brush my teeth and get ready to sleep. The Mexican restaurant was definitely a chance worth taking, but I still question the Rest Area. Is this place safe? I don't have much choice, I'll have to find out first hand, but every time I hear a car pull up as I fall asleep, a small voice in the back of my head says, “I hope I don't have to call the cops...”
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