Coast-to-Coast in the Mooney M20J
| ✈️ Trip Start 🐶 | Trip Home | Leg 2 - Bardstown, KY to Ames, IA >> |
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Leg Stats
- Time Enroute: 4.5 hrs
- Distance (direct): 593nm
- Distance (actual): 654nm
- Fuel Used: 51.1 gal
We originally planned to depart a week earlier, but some commitments in Orlando that week prevented us from leaving. We settled on the week of the 15th. We then thought maybe we'd leave on Thursday, but the weather looked 'better' on Wednesday, but not by much. The original plan was to stay at a hotel, but as it turned out, hotels were prohibitively expensive due to (we didn't know at the time) the Kentucky Bourbon Festival going on. Eventually, we determined that Katherine's grandmother's house had a spare room we could stay in (her mom moved temporarily for us), so we decided to stay there with them. This turned out to be the most challenging flight of the entire trip, actually. We planned to work a half-day (morning) and depart early if possible. I was in a huge hurry to get going, as I did not want to arrive in Kentucky very much after dark. We departed IFR in the mid-afternoon from Orlando, and the weather between Orlando and Kentucky was grim, lots of heavy precip and a few embedded CBs. At this point I felt the chances of getting all the way to Bardstown was low, so the plan was to get as close to KY as possible, and I had planned 3 or 4 different possible divert routes and fields. As I rolled onto the runway to depart, I remember thinking this is the last time I would see this familiar piece of pavement for an unknown amount of time. Lots and lots of left-right deviations, as well as requesting a reroute to the west of the Atlanta area, but we managed to find a pretty clear path through the weather. Overall only a few bumps, light rain, and about 1.0 IMC on this flight. Flew an uneventful approach just after sunset into Bardstown, broke out around 800 agl. I had previously called the FBO since we were to arrive quite late (FBO closes at 5pm), and we would arrive around 9pm, but the FBO people were awesome, met us after hours, and due to a miscommunication with Katherine's mom, we had no ride waiting for us, so they actually drove us to her house for free. We had a great visit in Bardstown with Katherine's mom, Sandra, and her grandmother, Fanny. We worked on Thursday and Friday from our guest room, and snuck out using Katherine's mom's car to get lunch at a couple local places, including Bardstown Burger, which was pretty good. On Saturday I had arranged for us to visit a couple Bourbon distilleries. Because of Bourbon Festival, it was very difficult to find availability, so we visited a couple lesser-known distilleries, Bardstown Bourbon Company and Preservation Distillery. We loved Bardstown Bourbon Company and had a great time there, the bourbons were excellent and they paired them with caramel corn, which turned out to be an excellent pairing. We didn't mention much about our Bourbon distillery visits to Katherine's grandmother, who asked me on at least 5 occasions whether I had been to Bardstown before, to which I said "No", and she would follow with telling me how "Well we're known for Bourbon, but I have to tell you I'm not proud of it." We also did a little exploring of Bardstown with Magic, and visited some old stone steps dating previous to the Civil War, and had lunch in the city park. We also had a couple good family meals, including with Katherine's uncle Lonny Leathers, and we made a short road trip to visit the Leathers family cemetery about 40 minutes away.
Trip Leg Navigation
