Kentucky is known for thoroughbreds and the three B’s:  basketball, burley and bourbon.  When it comes to the heritage of that hard liquor, it’s not hard to find bourbon artifacts or a bourbon mixing expert.  Kentucky’s Backroads found both at the Kentucky History Center during a recent visit.
 
Kentucky Historical Society curator Andy Stupperich showed us some bourbon artifacts kept in the center’s storage facility.  We also met Joy Perrine, co-author of a book which features more than 100 of her original bourbon cocktail recipes.  Perrine has been a bartender for 44 years.
 
"It has a wonderful flavor profile,” Perrine said admiringly of the brown spirit.  Her book comes during what she calls "the second golden age of bourbon."
 

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With the demise of tobacco across the bluegrass Joe McCord didn’t wait around to see what was next for his cattle and burley farm along U.S. Highway 60 in Clark County.  McCord changed his agricultural “game” plan, moving well beyond the popular switch to vegetables.  He also began raising game birds, mostly quail.
 
This week, on Kentucky’s Backroads, we visit McCord’s farm and quail preserve.  "Tobacco is hard work,” remembered McCord.  “I mean real hard work.  This isn't near as hard."  McCord will sell 12,000 quail this year, of which about 10,000 will be released on his farm’s preserve for others to hunt
 
"It gives the people with bird dogs that live in the city a place to exercise their dog."  The cost is $7 a quail with a minimum of 10 quail per hunt.
 
"I won't allow you to come in here and hunt unless you buy 70 dollars worth of birds and you know, if you kill 100 dollars worth of birds, more power to you,” said McCord about his 100 acre preserve.  He says he doesn’t hunt much but enjoys watching others work their dogs.
 
During our time at the preserve we followed a retired high school football coach who loves to hunt and says the preserve is a great place to break his bird dogs.

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The Challenger disaster was one of those “where were you?” moments in American history.  Children across the country were watching the space shuttle launch because schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe was on the crew.  Now, from that tragedy 14 years ago comes so much good.  Students who weren’t even alive when the Challenger broke up 73 seconds into its fateful flight are now learning because of an effort spearheaded by the families of the seven crew members.
 
This week on Kentucky’s Backroads we join sixth graders from Williamsburg Elementary as they visit the Challenger Learning Center in Hazard.  It’s one of 47 living memorials to the Challenger crew, a place which breaths life into a child’s education.
 
Our camera is there as the students conduct a space shuttle mission in which they have to find and rendezvous with a comet.  We watch as the students solve problems and carry out their mission from both mission control and the space shuttle.

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