Tag Archives: Acres of Land Winery (Richmond KY)

2014/08/16 (S) Bus People

We enjoy the company of our fellow “hams” (amateur radio operators) and so our first destination this morning was the Senate Coney Island in South Lyon for the weekly SLAARC breakfast.  It was a much smaller turnout than last week, but that often leads to better conversation for the lower noise level if no other reason.

Converted bus people are also our kind of people, so our second destination today was the Fireman’s Park in Clio, Michigan where the joint CCO/GLCC “Back-to-the-Bricks” rally was taking place.  There were 22 rigs in attendance, 19 of which were converted buses.  We got there around 11AM and spent the afternoon visiting with whomever was around, starting with Pat and Vickie Lintner.  Light rain moved in during the early afternoon and we had a nice visit with our friends from Ontario, Bill and Karen, in their bus.

With a few exceptions we knew all of the attendees and they all knew us, so this was a comfortable reunion with old and new friends.  We had a chance to talk to Glen Williams, who runs a clock repair business named Tenor Clocks, about our broken grandfather clock and made an appointment for him to come work on it on Wednesday at noon.  (Glen is also part of a four man singing group named “Three Men and a Tenor”.  Glen is the Tenor.)  We were most cordially invited to stay for dinner but we had not paid to attend the rally and there was very little food we could (would) eat so we left around 6 PM as the group was assembling for the evening meal.

We stopped at the Panera in Fenton on the way home and enjoyed their black bean soup and Mediterranean veggie sandwich, hold the feta cheese.  Once home we enjoyed a small glass of Late Harvest Vignoles wine from Acres of Land winery in Kentucky while we worked on our iPads a bit before bed.

 

2013_10_13 (N) A Fork In The Road

We spent a quiet night with only an occasional car passing by.  Someone nearby must have a pack of dogs and fed them around 6 AM as I heard them howling in the distance.  At first I thought they were coyotes, but it wasn’t the right kind of howl.  We finally got up around 8 AM to cool temperatures and light fog.  I checked the house batteries state of charge (I really need to get the Magnum ME-ARC remote panel installed up in the house) and it was 71%, not bad for having powered the coach for 8 hours.

Sunrise at Acres of Land near Richmond, KY

Sunrise at Acres of Land near Richmond, KY

A nice sunrise lit up the bedroom and by 9 AM the fog had burned off as we ate our breakfast of Linda’s homemade granola with fresh bananas, orange juice, and a cup of coffee.  This morning’s coffee was the Breakfast Blend from World Markets that Kathy brought to our open house.  It was delicious and already ground.  We generally grind our coffee beans, but it’s always nice to have ground coffee on hand, especially when we only want to make a couple of cups.

We had 186 miles to travel today, and check-in time at Tremont Outdoor Resort was 1 PM, so we targeted 10 AM as our departure time.  We left a little after 10 and took KY-876 east back to I-75 and continued south towards Tennessee.  Just after crossing the border we started down a long, steep grade but had to come to a complete stop before reaching the bottom.  We sat still, or moved along very slowly, while police cars, ambulances, fire trucks, and emergency management vehicles sped past us on the right shoulder.  We eventually had to move to left as the accident was in the right lane, and got the ire of an SUV who apparently felt we had cut them off.  Sorry.  It was an accident scene everyone in the right lane had to move to the left.  Here’s a tip for folks driving cars: when a semi or large RV puts on its turn signal, you might want to consider letting them move over.  These are large, slow vehicles and they need your cooperation to operate safely.

When we reached the accident scene there were two motorhomes on the side of the road, one with a towed vehicle that had the driver’s side smashed in, and a small white car that had been rear-ended and squashed pretty bad.  We tried to move through the accident zone as quickly as traffic allowed, but were not able in that short span of time to surmise just what had happened, other than something bad.

The rest of the trip to Knoxville was uneventful although traffic was heavier as cars and trucks cleared the accident scene and tried to make up for lost time.  We finally left  I-75, picking up I-275 through the city to where it was supposed to join up with I-40, which we thought we would take west and shortly thereafter pick up US-129 headed south towards Maryville.  That was the plan.  Remember plans from a recent post?  The Knoxville highway system is complex, and we were following the directions on our Rand-McNally RVND 7710 GPS while Linda double checked what we were doing on her Samsung Galaxy III smartphone.  Everything was fine until we came to a literal fork in the road and the GPS failed to tell us which way to go.  Intuitively we needed to go to the right, but that exit sign said “Downtown” and that didn’t seem right so we took the exit to the left and ended up…downtown.  Not just downtown, but on a very steep hill going up where we had to stop at a red light.  I don’t know what the grade of this hill was, but the bus was barely able to get moving from a dead stop.

On the plus side, while we were stopped there, a man crossed the street wearing a nice suit and bow tie and smiled and waved to us.  Also on the plus side, Sunday afternoon traffic was very light, so we didn’t have any further difficulties driving the 1.8 miles through the University of Tennessee campus back over to US-129 southbound.

At that point we were back on plan.  Just north of Maryville we picked up TN-35 which links up with the E Lamar Alexander Parkway, US-321 / TN-73 eastbound, which continued on as TN-73 and took us to Townsend.  Although the road got narrow and twisty in places, it was a pleasant and pretty drive.  All told, the accident scene and the Knoxville sight-seeing delayed our arrival at the Tremont Outdoor Resort by about 45 minutes from what the GPS originally predicted and we pulled in around 2:30 PM.

We turned off of TN-73 and crossed a bridge over a small river to enter the resort, at which point the GPS alerted us that we exceeded the weight limit of the bridge.  There were no weight limits posted  on this bridge, so we are not sure what that was all about.  We pulled up to the check-in area, scraping the top of the coach with the low over hanging branches that they assured us on the phone they did not have, and Linda went in to take care of the paperwork.  I could see from the driver’s seat that the roads in this RV park were not generous and might be problem.  When she returned with the map we unhooked the car and drove the route they wanted us to take to our site.  Right.  There were trucks parked where they shouldn’t be, and a maintenance golf cart by the restrooms that block part of the road.  I backed up and took the left fork in the entrance road, pulled up the tag axle, and made the hard left in sections B & C of the park.  From there I made a hard right, scratching the passenger side of the coach on some low pine/fir branches, finally got lined up, and back down into our section and into site B3.

The reason I mention all of this is that when we call to make a reservation we are very, very specific with people about the size and weight of our coach and specifically ask about overhead obstructions such as tree limbs.  (We always call, never book online, because of this.)  People consistently tell us that “you won’t have any problem” and it is, quite frankly either an ignorant response (they have no idea if we will have a problem or not) or they just plain lie about it.  I am also convinced that when we tell them we are 8.5 feet wide, 40 feet long (closer to 60 feet with the car in tow), 13 ft 2 inches tall, and weigh about 41,000 pounds those are just numbers that don’t mean anything to them.

But we got parked, leveled the coach, shut down the engine, and “made camp.”  I pulled out our Kenwood TH-F6 HTs (small hand held ham radios known as handi-talkies) and gave Lou, K9LU, a call on the previously agreed frequency of 146.550 MHz.  He was monitoring the frequency and came right back to my call.  Lou is the founder of the SKP Photographers BOF, and the organizer of the photography workshop we are here to participate in.  We went for a stroll around the RV park, as we usually do when we first arrive, and eventually made our way to Lou and Val’s 5th wheel where we had a nice chat.

We skipped lunch today, so Linda started dinner preparations when we got back to the coach.  She improvised a dish of diced potatoes, tomatoes, mushrooms, onion, and garlic, seasoned with basil and pan fried in a little bit of olive oil.  She served it with a side of broccoli and glass of red wine.  A couple of hours later we had some more of the wonderful blackberry pie we bought on the Fulton Farm Market on Friday.  I will be sorry to see the end of that pie, it really has been that good.

Since we are here for a digital photography workshop, I presume we will have more photographs to post over the next few days, but not today.

 

2013_10_12 (S) Acres of “Land”

We had an issue last night that I didn’t mention in yesterday’s blog post.  With the generator running the microwave/convection oven would not operate correctly.  It would run for a few second and then start to pulse.  We are not sure what the problem is, but presume it is the microwave and not the generator/inverter, which seem to be working fine otherwise.  We won’t be able to diagnose this any further until we get to Tremont RV Park and can hook up to shore power.

We knew last night that the Fulton Farm Market was expecting a busy day today with lots of folks showing up to buy pumpkins and other seasonal items, so this morning around 8:30 AM we fired up the engine and repositioned the coach where there would not be any cars blocking our exit.  I also started up the generator to recharge the batteries, and all of the engines running spooked the cats a bit, so they went under the front passenger seat.

The Market was scheduled to open at 10 AM and we were originally thinking of sticking around until 11 AM.  By 9 AM it was obvious we had made the right decision to move, based on the activity of the employees, and decided to move our departure time up to 10 AM.  They pull wagons with tractors out to the pumpkin patch where folks can pick their own pumpkin, and they were blocking off parts of the parking lot with cones to create pickup and drop-off stations for the wagons that we originally thought we would be able to use as exit paths.

Around 9:15 Linda noticed that the OPEN sign on the store building (barn) was already turned on, so we wandered over to get some coffee.  The gal who runs the coffee shop showed up right behind us and put on some decaf to brew.  We had a nice chat while we waited, and 5 minutes later we were headed back to the coach with our coffee.  We chatted briefly with one of the cashiers on the way out.  We made the coach ready for travel and at 10 AM, with cars showing up, we started up and pulled out.  No fixed plan.

We turned out onto OH-202 headed south and eventually came to I-70 where we headed west back to I-75 and continued out southbound journey.  We had 184 miles to travel today and figured it would take 4 hours with a lunch stop.  There was a lot of construction in the Dayton area and again in Cincinnati, but we made it through without any difficulty.  Southern Ohio is hilly and northern Kentucky even more so, with a good climb up away from the Ohio River right after you cross at Cincinnati.

I-75 in Kentucky is a very good road with smooth surface.  It goes up and down and back and forth as it twists through the rolling terrain, and it was a fun drive with no stress.  We pulled in to a rest stop north of Lexington to have a bite of lunch and stretch our legs.  Another hour and we were at exit #87 just south of Richmond.  We headed west on KY-876 (Barnes Mill Rd) and 6 miles later pulled into the gravel parking lot on the south side of the road across from the Acres of Land Winery.  It was 2 PM.

L 70(1) Our parking spot across from Acres of Land Winery, a Harvest Hosts location.

Our parking spot across from Acres of Land Winery, a Harvest Hosts location.

We had looked at satellite images of the site last night, so we knew what to expect when we got there.  The driveway in from the road was steep, but we did not bottom out.  The gravel parking lot was a long two long parallel rows with a loop around at the end.  What we did not expect was the extent to which it was overgrown.  It was mostly tall grasses, but it was obvious that this lot had not seen any use in quite some time.  We also noticed a large concrete pad at the near end.  We found out later that they had a serious fire in 2009, and we suspect that the pad is where the winery was and the gravel lot was where customers parked.  All of that activity now takes place on the north side of the road.

We pulled all the way around and back near the entrance.  The site was not quite level enough, so I leveled the coach before shutting down the engine.  I checked the battery state of charge (SOC) before shutting the generator down.  I figured it would be 100% since the generator had run the refrigerator all the way down allowing the Magnum 4024 to just charge the batteries, but it was only at 94%.

R 48 Restaurant and Tasting Room, Acres of Land Winery, Richmond, KY.

Restaurant and Tasting Room, Acres of Land Winery, Richmond, KY.

We opened windows and turned on ceiling fans and headed over to the winery.  Acres of Land is owned and operated by Lowell and Katherine Land.  Lowell grew up in the white farm house not far from where we are parked, and is the 3rd generation of his family to farm this property.  Originally a tobacco farm, tobacco growing started moving overseas to take advantage of cheaper labor and the Land’s started looking for an alternative crop.  The property turned out to be suitable for growing grapes and they converted the farm into a vineyard and winery.

Our coach viewed from a front window of the tasting room.

Our coach viewed from a front window of the tasting room.

They charge $2.50 to taste three wines and $4.50 to taste six.  We decided to only taste three and to split the tasting.  The way they do the tastings is quite different from what we are used to in Michigan and other places.  We circled the three wines we wanted to try on order slip and then found a table where we could sit.  The wines are served in small wine glasses (brandy snifters?) placed in hanging holders that hold three or six glasses, depending which tasting you ordered.  There is a white laminated disk around the base of the holder on which they write the number of the wine from the order form so it is under the corresponding glass.  In our case, Katherine brought the wine sampler to our table and chatted with us for a little while.  What we liked about this approach is that you could actually go back and forth between wines if you wanted to.

In our case we had their Red Robin, Vignoles, and Late Harvest Vignoles, and sampled them in that order.  The Red Robin was sweet but very full and had a lovely mouth feel.  The Vignoles was equally nice, refreshing but not thin.  Both were well done in our opinion.  The Late Harvest Vignoles, however, was a more complex and unusual wine, and was my favorite of the three.  As much as I would have liked to take home several bottles of each, we decided to buy just one of the Late Harvest Vignoles for $18.

One of the 10-yr-old Bourbon barrels being used to age a special red wine.

One of the 10-yr-old Bourbon barrels being used to age a special red wine.

About the time we finished our tasting Lowell was assembling a group for a tour of the winery.  We have toured a fair number of wineries, so we did not see anything here that we hadn’t seen before, except for one thing; Acres of Land has a wine that they age in used bourbon barrels.  The particular barrels they use come from a Kentucky distillery that used them to age their 10-year-old bourbon.  We did not get a chance to taste this wine as it wasn’t on their tasting menu.  We might not have liked it anyway as neither Linda nor I care for bourbon or whiskey, but Katherine thought it was a uniquely divine product.

This was our 4th Harvest Hosts location, and we are big fans of the program, but the challenge for us is to make sure our “free camping” doesn’t turn out to consistently be the most expensive stops we make.  We don’t buy things we don’t like, and need is a pretty relative concept, but you can drop a lot of coin on wine very easily.  We like the idea, however, of trying wines and other local agricultural products as we travel, and it fits our lifestyle to buy things we can consume rather than “collect” things we then have to find a place for in the house.

Dinner was a nice salad (Swiss chard, kale, and spinach) with carrots, celery, cucumbers, broccoli, tomatoes, peppers, and fresh strawberries with a balsamic vinaigrette dressing.  Dessert was another serving of the blackberry pie we bought at the Fulton Farm Market yesterday.  Being in the refrigerator for 24 hours had helped it set up so it wasn’t so juicy.

I left the generator off until 8 PM by which time it was down the house batteries were down to 67% SOC.  I checked that the Magnum 4024 AC Input was set to 50 Amps and reset the maximum charge rate from 80% to 90%.  Ideally the batteries should be brought back up to 100% SOC every time.  But the last few percent is done at a low current float charge rate which can take quite a while and is not a particularly efficient use of the generator.

Linda scanned for other-the-air TV channels and found one that was carrying game one of the ALCS between the Detroit Tigers and the Boston Red Sox.  We are in very pleasant country, but we are not wandering the in wilderness, at least not yet.