Louisville, KY

We decided on our way back to return Freya to Nick that we would do some sightseeing in and around Louisville. Our day started with a chilly walk to the Louisville Slugger Museum and Factory. We didn't check the weather and didn't bring a jacket (it was below freezing 🥶).

When we got to the museum, it was just in time for our tour of the factory. We took a couple of quick pictures of the outside with the world's largest bat and then went inside to join our tour. The tour was led by an older woman. She shared some tidbits about the bats and the process, but the tour information was predominantly imparted via a pre-recorded video voiceover.

We learned about the three different woods used to make bats, birch, maple, and ash, and how a player will choose a wood for the attributes the wood gives a bat. For example, ash is lightweight, but chips, whereas maple and birch are stronger and heavier, but break in splinters easier if hit in the wrong place. The factory tour walked us through the machines that make the bats in 30 seconds via a programming plate, which is good because the average professional player will order 120 bats each season! There are a lot of different ways to customize the bats and apparently where the logo is placed on the bat isn't random. The type of wood determines where a ball should be hit. The logo is placed in a certain way to ensure the player using the bat hits the ball in the best place. Often, the logo needs to face up when a player uses the bat. I'm certainly going to try and keep an eye out for this when I watch a game now!

After our factory tour, we collected our mini bats as our tour token and then had a walk through the museum. There was so much to see and I was in baseball heaven. I can only imagine what it would be like to go to the Baseball Hall of Fame. We saw lots of statistics about batting averages and home runs. It was pretty special to see bats used to break records like Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron. One of the last sections we walked through you had the opportunity to hold a bat from a player. They had current players' bats, but also historic ones. I couldn't resist and held the bat that was once held and played with by Babe Ruth. There were so many good ones to choose from though.

We couldn't linger in the museum or visit the bat room though because we had to get back on the road and head towards Jim Beam. We got there just before our tour was due to begin. We went around the distillery learning how Jim Beam makes their bourbon.

Our guide took us around the distillery showing us the different steps to making bourbon. Having been to Makers Mark, a lot of the initial steps and process were the same. During the tour we sampled some of the bourbon. It was nice, but it didn't hold a candle to Makers Mark. We wandered around the shop to let some of the liquor process before getting back in the car.

Once our time at Jim Beam was done, we finished the drive back down to Alabama. We hit some traffic, but it wasn't too bad and we got back before bedtime which was a bonus, even with our stops.Read more