Watery Wednesday

Yesterday was a wonderful day . We went to Land Between the Lakes. For those unfamiliar with the area, LBL is the land in between Lake Barkley and Kentucky Lake. It's a huge, beautiful park.

This is my first Watery Wednesday. My first two photos today are rather watery.

Here is my practically requisite frog shot. Yes, it was warm enough for frogs! I saw several and caught two. Yes, of course, I let them go very shortly afterward. Both kids thought the frogs were really neat.

From the 1840's to 1912, before the lakes were created, the area around what is now LBL, was iron-producing. There were several iron furnaces. The prettiest industrial waste I have ever seen is something called slag. According to Wikipedia , "Slag is a partially vitreous by-product of smelting ore to separate the metal fraction from the unwanted fraction. It can usually be considered to be a mixture of metal oxides and silicon dioxide."


It's a beautiful blue to blue-green, glasslike substance.
I love the striations that are in many pieces.
Slag's mixed into the gravel on some of the roads around Center Furnace. It's in the grass. It's in the creek.
To me, it looks like gemstones strewn all over.
Unfortunately, you can't take slag with you, but you CAN take all the photographs you want. My next trip will be on a sunny day so I can see how the bits of slag sparkle in the sunlight.
Some pieces are as small as pebbles; some are as big as baseballs.




Here is a photo of the remains of Center Furnace.


Click on the above photo, and notice the decorative pattern in the bricks on the left side of the furnace. Isn't that neat? I think that's a nice detail for a factory that was designed to be run continuously.


I highly recommend a trip to LBL to anyone within a reasonable drive. Did I mention that most things in LBL are free? They are. The things that aren't free are worth the money in my opinion. The Nature Station is a great place to go, especially with kids. They have coyotes, deer, owls, a bobcat, and many other critters. All for a whopping $4 for adults. For $5 per carload, you can see elk and bison in an enclosure that is so large that the animals appear to be in the wild. In addition to our native White-tailed Deer, you will also likely see Fallow Deer in LBL. We didn't see any yesterday, but we usually do. We did see a Coyote cross the road in front of us. I think our total deer count was about 17. Of course, there are many places in LBL where water birds can been seen. We saw some unidentified ducks, White Pelicans, and several Great Blue Herons. I'm already itching to go back.

Hope you all are having a great week like I am!

-Susan