LBL Two
Monday morning was spent mostly inside Land Between the Lakes.
You may not know this (I didn’t prior to our trip) but LBL is a state park and not one single soul lives inside that area. In a nutshell, the Cumberland and the Tennessee Rivers were dammed up, creating Kentucky Lake on the West and Lake Barkley on the Right. LBL is the area between, basically a peninsula of sorts. Without going into a lot of detail, from what I understand, the rivers were dammed up when the government just got tired of all their flooding and figured damming up was the way to go. Many people were forced to sell their land to the government and they were all moved out of the area. Some took their houses and other buildings with them while others left them there.
With that little bit said, you’ll understand why we had to hit a little general store on the way in, at the edge of civilization… we needed bread for our picnic lunch.
We crossed over Kentucky Lake on Highway 68 and then went on up The Trace (the main road that travels from North to South through the area). We stopped first at the Visitor’s Welcome Center and Planetarium.
Seeing that the Planetarium was not only full of two school busses of fourth graders, but only showed movies, we decided to skip that.
Steve and I both got hats at the gift shop (which turned out to be very wise purchases) and we headed North a couple of miles to the Elk and Bison Prairie. We didn’t get to see much at the prairie though, a few elk, yes, but no bison. I was disappointed in that but later that night we happened to see some grazing in someone’s field along the highway, someone’s private farm, so that was cool.
From there we kept heading north and went on out to go to the Woodlands Nature Station. Just before the nature station we saw the Center Furnace Ruins. Apparently, they once made iron here, from the 1840’s through 1912. All that’s left now is some brick and rock inside a fence. But it was quite neat.
Up the hill was the nature station which basically had a kids area talking about everything from bugs and bones to trees and animals. Lots of stuffed animals in there, and a few real live ones:
That was inside. Outside in the back they had lots more live animals… deer, turkeys, bobcat, owls, coyote, etc.
My sister-in-law and I were cracking up at one point because the bobcat was meowing! If I hadn’t seen and heard it myself, I wouldn’t have believed it! :-) They also fed the deer some apples and turnips while we were there and Elijah got to throw some of the food in. He did quite good, even from his stroller.
It started to rain a bit then so we left and headed down the road to a picnic shelter and had some lunch before heading to our next destination. Along the way, we drove by Energy Lake which is also very interesting. On the West you have Energy Lake and on the East is Lake Barkley, you drive over the dam for Energy Lake.
So from there we dirt-roaded for a bit until we got to The Homeplace. The Homeplace was one of my favorite things. It’s pretty much a farm that operates as normal but you can walk around and look at all the buildings and going-ons. The buildings are all from the 1850’s era and from what I understand, were gathered from more than one original farm. There are animals there and the people do chores as they would have done in the 1800’s. I took lots of photos!
So, yeah. Lots of photos. It didn’t seem like so many until I started posting them here… Well, anyway I filled up my card that day. I had to go back through and delete a few so that I could take one at the cemetery we found later.
It’s pretty neat because they say there are over 240 cemeteries in that little piece of land. They’re just everywhere, though typically off the roads a bit, so you don’t see them right away. They have signs to them though. But Steve would only let me visit that one. He’d said to me, “okay, okay, okay, next sign for a cemetery you see, let me know and we’ll go see it.” Turned out to be back several miles on a gravel road. Well, that’s what he gets for not giving me my way in the first place. :P
Finally we ended up back at the cabin and we kind of chilled for a minute then headed back out in search of supper. We ended up at the Cracker Barrel in Calvert City for a nice meal.
And because he’s so cute, here’s the little eagle I bought for Elijah, it’s got a bouncy ball in it’s body. :-) Also, my hat, a magnet I bought (see photo for description), and a potpourri book. You think I can supplement my candles with that? ;-) Well, I’m going to give it a try anyway.
So that was my Monday, how was yours?
