{Saturday Road Trip}

With summer coming to an end, and given the fact that we haven't gone anywhere, we decided Saturday was a great day for a road trip. Destination? Kentucky! This was a new venture for us and we were pretty excited to explore The Land Between The Lakes. I brought along my camera (of course) to work on some techniques and capture the day....so...get ready for picture overload :)

First stop was the Nature Station and while we were driving through the gate, we came upon this herd of fallow deer. These deer could care less that we were there and we were able to get within about 30 feet. Beautiful!

The Nature Station was a little small, but had plenty of eye candy. I caught this butterfly flittering around gathering pollen. There were several gorgeous butterflies and I tried to capture the hummingbirds....oh my...there were too many to count...and they were a little fast for my camera skills. One of the Nature Guides told us they were in a feeding frenzy, getting ready for their migration across the Gulf of Mexico.

This little feller (turkey) was taking advantage of some thirst quenching water.

Practicing my depth of field....

Pretty pleased with these results....

This was a great setting to capture some pictures of Blake....he just recently celebrated his 16th birthday and I've yet to get the official pictures...and since he absolutely loves nature...this was the perfect setting. These pictures were actually taken just outside the Red Wolf den...which was the main thing Blake wanted to see. They are endangered with less than 300 still living.

Handsome Fellow!

We left the Nature Station in search of some good food and seen all these sailboats on the lake (Kentucky Lake) and of course I had to stop and grab some photos. I mean seriously...how often do you see a lake full of sailboats??

Shooting past some grass....

Using depth of field to focus on grass and blur sailboat...

After stopping to eat at Miss Scarlet's, where I ate one of the best burgers I've ever had (akin to a Roys Burger for those that know), we stopped at the Lighthouse Landing.

We met this delightful lady, Joan, from Alabama. She was just enjoying the nice breeze by the dock and reading, while her husband of 56 years participated in the sailboat races. Alas! We know why there's so many sailboats out on the lake!!

Sailboats...sailboats...and more sailboats!

Quentin and Blake enjoying the view...

My little man...that has somehow become a young man...do you see that hair on his face?? Where did my little boy go?

This just looks so incredibly peaceful....

A small storm blew in while we were at the Landing and this picture captured it perfectly!

On to our next stop...The Bison & Elk Prairie...once we finally figured out how to work the pay gate, we were in...and this is the first thing we seen. Bison! Up close and personal.

I've only seen bison on television, so this was pretty cool and super cheap...$5 per car. We also were lucky enough to see a herd of momma elk, but they were too far in the distance to get a really good picture.

Last stop of the day was at The Hitching Post....it was like stepping back in time. Blake and I enjoyed a game of tic-tac-toe on the front porch of the store and then Blake tried the original "Teeter" game...much harder than it looks and as you can tell...he was in deep concentration!

We had so much fun just exploring The Land Between The Lakes from one end to the other and I'm sure we'll be making this trip again :)