Kentucky Summer

Hello everyone!  My family, a family of our close friends, and I recently came back from an awesome trip to Kentucky Lake!  Beware, this post is extremely long, but the pictures are pretty! :D

Our first morning in our rental house was pretty cool, we saw a squirrel right in front of the window by the kitchen table!  He's hard to see, but he's there XD

The flowers from my last post that my friend, sister, and I kept in our room for the week :)

The next 4 photos are all of the lake, and some cool rock formations we saw along the shore.  The lake was huge!! These pictures don't do it justice.  Monday, the day I took these pictures, we rented a double-decker pontoon boat with a slide.  It was so fun!

Later on in our trip we climbed around on these rocks :D

A Great Blue Heron we saw at the marina when we dropped of the boat, just chillin.
The Heron just so happens to be my favorite bird! :)

Tuesday, the gang headed to the Land Between the Lakes, which is an island, sort of, between Kentucky Lake and Lake Barkley.  Some of the island is in the state of Kentucky, and some in the state of Tennessee.  There were many activities there, which I will talk about as they come up :)

Another shot of the giant lake as we crossed the bridge to get from the mainland onto LBL

The first thing we did was head to the Elk and Bison Prairie (self-explanatory), which was something my mom really wanted to do, and I'll admit, I wanted to see too.  The worker at the Visitor's Center warned us that because it was so hot, the elk & buffalo might go into hiding in the woods to seek shade.  Welp, he was right - the only buffalo we saw in the prairie was of the wing variety ;)

(These are really good by the way)

We did see some turkeys though, and an elk footprint.  There was also a place we could tell the bison had recently been, because there were fresh piles all over one section of the path.  My dad had to do some extreme driving there XD

Next we went to a zoo, for lack of a better term, and they had many local species of animals.

An old tower we saw on the long drive to the "zoo"

An injured butterfly we found at the front of the center

Their hummingbird garden:  filled with so many hummingbirds, squirrels, and normal birds!

A pretty (albeit sad looking) coyote

Barn Owl

Barred Owl

A groundhog XD

A pretty female red wolf, the species is endangered!  This center had a breeding center for the canines :)

Red-tailed Hawk

Mr. Great Horned Owl

I got some really cool close-ups of this Monarch butterfly! :D

Flying squirrels! (That bright thing is my shoe lol) There was a nest of babies too, but my picture turned out really bad lol :)

I did not realize how big bison teeth were!

 Finally, we visited a working 1800's farm which was super cool!  And on the car ride to that section of the island, we finally saw some bison! :D

Can you find the two chickens? ;)

The oxen and cow hanging out in the shade

This sheep is my spirit animal XD

The kissing was me trying to get him to come to me XD

A candy stick my parents bought me :D

The rest of the afternoon and night we just hung out at the resort

A cool coffee tree there!

A dog my friend and I befriended:  Wally the white Lab <3

A really tiny frog I held for a couple seconds XD
(Yes, that blurred out person is me XD)

On our last full day in Kentucky, we rented another boat with a bigger engine, which we used for tubing, after hanging out for the most of the day in the quarry.  Here's a quick video tour of said quarry :)

The water where we were was about 113 feet deep and 88 degrees!

As it turns out, not only humans inhabit this quarry, raccoons hang out there too!

He's hard to see, but he's the little black fuzzy-looking thing above that white rock

This one is a little camouflaged too, but easier to find.  See if you can spot him ;)

On our way back to our home in northern Illinois, my family decided to stop at Springfield and check out some of the Lincoln exhibits, and we stayed a night at a hotel as well.  The evening we got there, we visited Lincoln's house...

 and after our tour Lincoln was standing out in his backyard! We had time-traveled to 1860!

That is my right side XD

Okay, I exaggerated a little, but this actor was incredibly realistic (though I can't really compare, having never seen Lincoln in the flesh) and really on top of his game - he never broke character.  I was impressed!

The next morning we headed off to the Lincoln Presidential Museum, which was cool enough, but I don't have any photos to show XD  We also visited Lincoln Depot, the train station that was around in Lincoln's day, to see some sets from the movie "Lincoln", directed by Steven Spielberg!

All of the sets in the movie were completely accurate as well!  It amazes me how much detail goes into movies

After the train station and the museum, my mom really wanted to see the old state capitol, so took the 2-block walk from the train station there.  There were people dressed in clothes from the time period (my favorite, I love the old style of dresses :3) there to answer any questions we had.  I didn't take any photos there either, aside from these two:

When Lincoln was a representative here, he looked at this same portrait!

A photo to show more of "Representative Hall".  There is a top hat marking where Lincoln sat in the room, to the direct right of that lady's head.  (The guy on the podium was giving a concert, I guess XD)

Our final visit in Springfield was Lincoln's (and his family's) final resting place:  his tomb, which, as sad is the topic of death is, is really impressive.  Some facts about the monument:

• The tomb has gone through 3 renovations throughout its lifetime
• The obelisk is 117 feet tall, and the entire exterior of the tomb is made of granite
• There are many engravings around the statue that have many different meanings, but the most obvious ones are more statue-like:  Lincoln in the middle (in this photo), and on all 4 corners are statues of the 4 branches of military Lincoln controlled in the Civil War, infantry, cavalry, artillery, and navy
• All of the bronze statues stated in the above fact were crafted from 65 cannons used in the Civil War
• There is a bronze bust of Lincoln in front of the tomb (I don't have any photos of it), and it's tradition to rub his nose :)
• Lincoln is buried 10 feet underground and 3 feet behind his gravestone is within the tomb

"Now he belongs to the ages"

To conclude our trip, we stopped for ice cream, and proceeded on our journey home.  This was an irreplaceable experience, perfectly combining learning and leisure, and I would love to take a trip like this again :)