Sunday Outing

 Last Sunday we went for a drive. First stop was under the bridge that spans the Ohio River with Milton, KY on the south side and Madison, IN on the north side. From there we watched a couple of the speed boat races that were taking place on the Ohio River. We had never seen a speed boat race. Interesting but might have been better if we had been closer. Had to use my zoom lens to get these few photos. You can see the big spray the boats created as they rounded the turn close to us. There was a boat there to indicate the turn.

Here you can sort of see the area where the speed boats were dropped into the water by the three cranes that were there. The same cranes lifted the boats out after a race. From what I could see it was usually two boats racing at a time. With a long, long wait between races, which got rather boring so we only watched for about an hour. We spent a lot of that time talking to a couple of people that were watching from the same place under the bridge.

leaving the races we took a drive to one of our favorite places in Carrollton, Ky. This photo is of the large pond going into General Butler State Park. The next is a close shot of the point you can see in this picture. There is a path and a pinic table there but we didn't go out this day. Was to hot and humid. This view can be seen when driving the main road through Carrollton. There is a pull off there if you want to stop.

This is the other side of the pond and I got a fair shot with reflextions of the trees on the far bank.

Trees seen at the Lookout Point in the park.

On our way out of the park we saw a buzzard or maybe a vulture sitting up in a dead tree. These big birds can be seen flying all over Kentucky. Not as pretty as other birds but are so valuble to clean up the dead animals (deer, raccoons, possoms, and others) seen along road ways.

White Tailed Deer

We took a drive over to Carrollton, KY yesterday and drove through General Butler State Park which is almost in the middle of the town. Its not the kind of state park I am used to out in the southwestern states which are usually don't have anything besides a visitors center and if you are lucky a small area for camping. The state parks in KY all seem to have big, fancy resorts and restaurants on them. General Butler includes cabins for rent, a golf course and a center for meetings. But it is a nice drive through several hundred acres of native Kentucky county and has lots of hiking trails. The Kentucky river runs through part of it and there is a large pond area where geese and other birds can be seen. We had stopped at a (so called) primitive camping area (another words for tent camping, not primitive by western ideas) that over looked the pond sort of. There was to much brush and trees to see the pond well from this spot, but we decided it was a good place to stretch our lets and let our dog, Ziva, get out for a bit. It was to muddy to do much hiking so we stayed to the paved drive way (remember this is a primitive camp area). Ziva kept acting like she wanted to go back to our Jeep so we wondered back slowly and she wanted to stand in front of the Jeep looking down into a gully. Ok, I thought, there is a bird or squirrel down there and she can see or smell it even if I can't. But I kept looking as did Ziva and then I saw some small tree trunks start walking. I realized there were about 3 deer just coming out of the gully onto the road we had come in on. Of course they were several hundred yards away with a deep gully in between and if they hadn't crossed the road I don't think we would have seen them. Lee and I discussed it thinking the deer would be far back into the woods by the time we could drive over there. But as we were ready to leave we did so. And we were surprised to see the deer still standing by the road when we got there. And not just 3. We were able to count at least 8. All does and their fawns from last summer. They didn't pay us much attention so I got my camera and started taking photos. You could tell they were really used to people. I got several of the doe that acted as if she was the leader of the group. But I also took several of all of them just to show how well they are camouflaged when standing in a bunch of leafless trees and shrubs. There are at least 7 deer in the last photo on this post. I know where they are (sort of). But they sure are hard to see.