Casey Jones Distillery

Hopkinsville, a small town with a plentiful arts and cultural scene in South Western KY holds a huge solar surprise this summer! Hoptown, as the locals call it, is the point of greatest eclipse for the first total solar eclipse in the past 99 years!!!! What does this mean? Hopkinsville lies right on the centerline of the eclipse path and enjoys 2m40s of totality at 1:24:41pm. What is a total solar eclipse? A total solar eclipses occur when the new moon comes between the Sun and Earth and casts the darkest part of its shadow on Earth. The darkest part of the eclipse, the totality (HOPKINSVILLE) will make midday be almost as dark as night!! The path of the eclipse is only 70 miles wide, so most of the USA will actually not experience a total solar eclipse. But lucky for many of us in the surrounding area, we have the greatest viewing location in the entire WORLD in the palm of our hand! Hopkinsville, this little quiet town that we often frequent is about to become a bustling host for 11 different countries for this once in a lifetime event! We still have 76 days until our Total Solar Eclipse but the events for the big day have already begun! We ventured out to Casey Jones Distillery last Friday night for their night sky viewing with Austin Peay State University Astronomy and Physics Department. The dirt road driveway sits along the side of a farm and a beautiful open view of KY and welcome greetings are presented by the family dog, always a pleasurable way to arrive at any location for us. We grabbed our drinks, mine a special cocktail with Casey Jones Moonshine, a Peach Moon-A-Rita (felt appropriate) and began wandering the property. This was our first time at this distillery and we found ourselves saying “I can’t believe we’ve never been here.” The property is gorgeous! From the distillery barn to the walk among the landscaping down to the pond. The owners are just as beautiful. We felt entirely welcome and much like family during our time at Casey Jones. While waiting for dusk to approach, we found ourselves a seat above the pond under a red leaf maple and admired our surroundings......andddd drank moonshine and laughed, a lot. I’ve always been fascinated by this vast darkness above us and all it holds. Looking through the telescopes at our moon and other planets is always incredibly fascinating to me and that night did not disappoint. We were fortunate enough to talk with the Hopkinsville Eclipse Events Coordinator, Brooke, about this year’s solar eclipse events. The amount of different activities that will be happening the weekend before the eclipse and the day of are insane!!!! We have yet to decide which events we will be visiting but we will be sure to bring a little piece of each festival we visit to you all! The Distillery will be having more upcoming events to celebrate the eclipse, along with a viewing on 21 August for the actual eclipse. If you are not interested in partaking in the Eclipse viewing, I highly recommend partaking in a trip to the distillery another time and enjoy this beautiful property first hand. The Distillery offers visitors the “authentic” moonshine making experience with single-run Kentucky corn Whisky. During their operating hours, tours, tastings, and several beverage options are available.
Check out this website for all of the happenings in Hopkinsville on the weekend before the Total Solar Eclipse and download the app, Palaroo for festival maps and activities. http://www.eclipseville.com/
https://www.facebook.com/pg/HopkinsvilleEclipse…Read more