When Your Roommate’s Mom Visits
A companion post to Victoria‘s When Your Mom Visits (Version 2.0). While sadly my own mom isn’t able to visit me in Nashville this summer, Victoria’s mom’s visit definitely gave me the chance to do some exciting things that I hadn’t done before! Victoria’s post listed the first half of what she did last week, but I’d like to take this opportunity to elaborate on one part that I was there for: Lynchburg, TN.
There are quite a few factory tours on our Nashville list, and so we took advantage of our car access and headed on over to Lynchburg, about an hour and a half drive from Nashville, last Wednesday afternoon with Victoria’s mom and our friends Shilpa, Alice, and Spencer. In my time here in Nashville, I haven’t explored much farther than a 60 minute radius from campus, aside from trips to various campuses for club soccer games. Upon arrival in Lynchburg, I saw before me the South that I was expecting before I had ever been here: a one stoplight town where everything closes at 5pm and there are less than 6000 inhabitants. I really don’t think I’ve ever seen a town that small.
The major attraction of Lynchburg is the Jack Daniel’s Distillery. Even though the city is located in a dry county (aka no alcohol), the distillery has been there for much longer than the law and is still (obviously) able to produce Jack Daniel’s. The tour that we went on was free–which was excellent, since we are poor–and it was open to all ages. It involved a walk through the buildings where the whiskey is made, as well as a run-down on the history of the distillery and Jack Daniel himself, which was my personal favorite part of the tour. Our tour guide, Randy, was fantastic. He’s worked at the distillery for most of his working life, and he was the quintessential small-town Tennessee man–overalls and all.
After our tour, we headed to the center of Lynchburg for dinner at the Barrelhouse BBQ–a tiny restaurant, but the food was delicious! I am not the biggest BBQ fan you’ll ever meet, but I love a good pulled pork sandwich, and Barrelhouse definitely exceeded my expectations!
All in all, it was a great day in Lynchburg!