Last Updated: July 12, 2026
Shepherdsville, Kentucky sits just south of Louisville and serves as an ideal base for exploring two of the state’s great attractions: the lush, sprawling Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest and the legendary Kentucky Bourbon Trail. We arrived in late March 2020 from Cave City, eager to explore both — and found the same story we had been hearing across the country. COVID-19 restrictions were in full effect. Distillery tasting rooms, restaurants, and all social gatherings were closed as the country braced for what was coming. Bernheim Forest, however, was still open, and it turned out to be one of the most beautiful places we visited on the entire journey. The early spring blooms were extraordinary.
Visitor Information — Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest: Located at 2499 Clermont Road, Clermont, KY 40110 (approximately 25 miles south of Louisville). Open daily from sunrise to sunset. Admission is free on weekdays; a parking fee applies on weekends and holidays. The visitor center and gift shop maintain separate hours — check bernheim.org for current details before visiting. Phone: (502) 955-8512.
Shepherdsville KOA
RV park options in this area with full hookups and reliable wifi are limited, and the Shepherdsville KOA fit the bill. Because of the coronavirus, the park was less than half full. We landed a huge end pull-through site that felt completely private — plenty of trees, plenty of squirrels for Jake to track through the windows.
For Michael, this stop carried an unexpected weight of nostalgia. When he started his residency training at the University of Louisville 34 years earlier, he arrived broke, driving a barely-alive 1970 VW Bug. He could not afford an apartment until the first couple of paychecks cleared, so he pitched a tent at this very KOA for a couple of months — emerging each morning wearing a tie and white physician’s coat to head to the hospital. It was awkward, but the excitement of starting residency made it feel like a minor inconvenience rather than a hardship. He could never have imagined returning to this same campground one day in a Newmar Dutch Star motorhome, retired and on an open-ended road trip across the country. Life has a way of delivering surprises you could not have scripted.
Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest
Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest is one of Kentucky’s great hidden gems — 16,137 acres of forest, meadows, lakes, and meticulously maintained gardens donated to the people of Kentucky by Isaac W. Bernheim in 1929. Bernheim was a German-Jewish immigrant who arrived in America after the Civil War with little more than a few dollars and built a fortune in the bourbon industry. His gift to Kentucky was an act of profound gratitude to the country that had given him opportunity. The forest has grown into one of the largest privately held nature preserves in the eastern United States.
Kentucky has a remarkable abundance of public land — state parks, rivers, national recreation areas, and historic sites spread across the entire state. Bernheim stands apart as a necessary escape for Louisville residents when open space calls. We arrived at exactly the right moment. It was still early in the spring season, but the magnolia, plum, and cherry trees were at their absolute peak.
The Star Magnolia is a slow-growing species native to Japan. Its flowers — white or soft pink depending on the variety — appear before the leaves, giving the tree a striking, almost otherworldly look in early spring. The blooms are fleeting, lasting only a week or two before they drop, which made catching them at peak all the more satisfying.
The ornamental plum trees were equally stunning — masses of soft pink blossoms on bare branches, a reminder that spring does not arrive all at once but unfolds in waves, one species at a time.
The cherry trees were at their finest — clouds of white blossoms that turned ordinary branches into something luminous. On an overcast morning, they almost seemed to glow.
The pink saucer magnolias were the showstoppers. Large, cup-shaped blooms in shades from blush to deep rose — the kind of flowers that stop you mid-stride and make you reach for the camera.
The Butterfly Magnolia was perhaps our favorite — a rarer variety producing creamy pale yellow flowers with petals that flare upward like wings in flight. We had never seen one before. Bernheim’s arboretum collection is extensive and extraordinarily well-curated, and stumbling across varieties like this is exactly the kind of discovery that makes wandering through it so rewarding.
Beyond the flowering trees, Bernheim is also home to the famous Forest Giants — a series of massive troll-like wooden sculptures created by Danish artist Thomas Dambo and installed throughout the forest. The Forest Giants Trail is a three-mile round trip that winds through the woods from sculpture to sculpture, each figure constructed entirely from reclaimed wood and blending into the forest as though they had always been there. The scale of them is genuinely startling when you first walk up.
Along the trail, remnants of the old farmstead that once occupied the land appear in the woods — stone silos, foundations, and clearings slowly being reclaimed by the forest. Combined with the sculptures, the trail has an almost fairy-tale quality to it. Bernheim covers over 16,000 acres in total, with more than 40 miles of trails ranging from easy strolls through the arboretum to rugged backcountry hikes through old-growth forest. It is the kind of place that rewards repeated visits.
Jim Beam and the Kentucky Bourbon Trail
Just a stone’s throw from Bernheim is the Jim Beam Distillery in Clermont — one of the most visited bourbon distilleries in the world and a cornerstone of the Kentucky Bourbon Trail. The Beam family has been making bourbon here since 1795, making it one of the oldest continuously operated bourbon brands in America. The distillery campus includes barrel warehouses, a working stillhouse, the American Stillhouse museum, and a tasting room with the full range of Jim Beam expressions. COVID had shuttered all of it when we passed through, but simply seeing the old barn with its faded painted logo — aged and weathered but still unmistakably iconic — was enough to remind us just how deep bourbon’s roots run in this part of Kentucky.
The Kentucky Bourbon Trail links more than three dozen distilleries across the state, from major names like Jim Beam, Maker’s Mark, Four Roses, and Buffalo Trace to smaller craft producers tucked into the rolling hills of Bullitt County and beyond. It is one of the great food-and-drink road trips in America, and Shepherdsville puts you right at the heart of it. We will have the opportunity to do it properly on a future visit.
We left Shepherdsville with a genuine fondness for this corner of Kentucky. For Michael, it will always carry a particular resonance — those early months of residency training in Louisville, arriving with almost nothing and building a life here, left a mark that time only seems to deepen. We will be back for the Bourbon Trail, for more time at Bernheim, and to see what Louisville itself looks like when the world is not in the middle of a pandemic.
Practical Tips for Visiting Shepherdsville and Bernheim Forest
Visit Bernheim on a weekday if possible. Weekday admission is free; weekends and holidays carry a parking fee. The forest is popular with Louisville locals on weekends and can feel crowded, especially during peak spring bloom season.
Time your visit for the spring bloom windows. Depending on the year, the best bloom sequence at Bernheim runs roughly late March through April — star and Butterfly magnolias peak first, followed by plum and cherry, then tulip trees and dogwoods. Check Bernheim’s social media in the weeks before your visit for current bloom reports.
Allow a full day. The arboretum gardens alone can fill several hours, and the Forest Giants Trail adds another two to three hours of walking. Bernheim’s 16,000 acres include backcountry trails that go well beyond what most day visitors explore. Bring water and comfortable walking shoes.
Book bourbon distillery tours in advance. The Kentucky Bourbon Trail distilleries — Jim Beam, Maker’s Mark, Four Roses, Buffalo Trace, and others — are enormously popular. Tasting room experiences and guided tours fill up quickly, particularly on weekends. Reserve well before your visit at kybourbontrail.com.
Louisville is 25 miles north. The city is easily combined with a Shepherdsville base — Churchill Downs, the Louisville Slugger Museum, the Muhammad Ali Center, and a thriving restaurant and bar scene are all within easy reach.
Pets are welcome at Bernheim on leash on designated trails. Check the Bernheim website for current pet-friendly trail maps before you go, as some areas restrict dogs to protect wildlife habitat. Jake the dog would have had strong opinions about the squirrel population.
For more from our spring 2020 road trip, see our stop at Mammoth Cave National Park in Cave City, just to the south. And for more of Kentucky’s natural beauty, the Great Smoky Mountains are just a few hours southeast.
