Bison, Elk and Tulip Trees

One last post from our holiday last spring before I bring you back to the land of deep snow and winter (it's snowing heavily out the window at the moment).  While camped near Paducah, at the west end of Kentucky, we spent one day touring the Land Between the Lakes, with it's captive bison and elk herds.

Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area is a large tract of public land between Kentucky Lake and Lake Barkley, where the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers were dammed many years ago, in the 40's and 60's respectively.  It's now a multi-use recreation area with campgrounds, trails and numerous other outdoor facilities.

We didn't have time to explore it all, let alone learn the history, but we did enjoy a drive through a large enclosed area where we spotted both a few of the captive elk herd and two bison.  

Some of you have asked about the Tulip trees I mentioned, or indicated you'd like to see one.  Great Smoky Mountains is full of them, the two above along the Cades Cove drive by one of the old homesteads.  You can see the bark in the picture above, and the leaves below - the leaves are quite a unique shape and can't really be confused with anything else.

And this is the Tulip tree flower.  You can see why it's called a 'Tulip' tree; the flowers really do look like tulips, and are about the right size.  You rarely see them though, because in a forest the leaves and flowers are way up in the canopy.  This picture was taken in Kensington Gardens in London, England.  We do have tulip trees that make it into southern Ontario, but they're not common here.

And for those who asked, sorry, no pictures of the Quilt Festival (no photographs allowed in most cases to protect design copyrights, though many of the quilts were spectacular) and only a few hundred dollars worth of fabric brought back home.