We headed to Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area where we were due to camp for the night. It was only a 2 hour drive so a nice easy day to recover from the partying.
The drive took us out of Tennessee and into Western Kentucky.
Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area was designated a national recreation area by President John F. Kennedy in 1963 and is the largest inland peninsula in the US.
We arrived and stopped off at the visitors center to buy our camping pass; we decided to go with First Come First Served camping, high risk but there wasn't a lot of options with reservation camping. The first campsite we wanted was fully booked, this was the campsite with flushing toilets, showers and a camp shop. The lady checking us in recommended another campsite called Redd Hollow which was a lot more basic, only a vault toilet and no other facilities, but we had a lovely pitch right next to the lake side. We chilled out all afternoon and early evening, watching the lake and cooking on the fire.
After dinner, just as the sun was starting to go down, we headed to the Elk and Bison Prairie. We were told this was the best time to see them as they would be more active as it cooled down. It was amazing to see these animals in the wild. You go into the prairie via a metal gate and cattle grid and then drive around trying to find them. As long as they are not within 200ft, you're allowed to get out of your car and walk around too!
The Bison were really easy to find. It looked like all the mothers and calfs were together and then there was one male on his own. As we drove around, they were less than a meter from the car, a couple even crossed the road in front of us, looking at us as if we were an inconvenience!
One of the coolest things we saw with the Bison were the white birds that were constantly around them or on them. I assume they were eating the bugs off the Bison but the Bison didn't seem to notice them, at times it even looked like they welcomed them like friends.
The Elk were much more difficult to find, they seemed to be on their own or in pairs but on our second loop around, we found them! We saw a mother and her baby and then two males decided to come really close the car.
We spent about an hour driving around and had it not been for the sun setting, we could have spent a lot longer watching the Bison and Elk but we needed to get back to the tent before dark!
Despite the lovely location of our tent site, which up until dark seemed the perfect place, we didn't get much sleep this night.
As soon as the sun went down, this happened!
We were sitting in front of the fire at the campsite watching hundreds of little tiny frogs all hop towards the lake, getting ready to share their frog song with us for the entire night. They did stop until they hopped back home at sun rise which was around 5am!
If the frog song wasn't enough to keep us awake this night, we also had an inconsiderate neighbour who didn't have a RV or tent but had put a bed in the back of his car and had decided to watch TV loudly until the early hours. When he finally went to sleep, an inconsiderate boat decided to look for fish right in front of our tent. Asides from the noise, which wasn't too bad in comparison to the frogs, he had super bright lights which lit up the whole campsite!
It was around 5am when everything started to quieten down and we could finally get some sleep when I saw lightning in the distance. At 6:30am we decided the lightning was getting too close and rather than put the fly (waterproof overcoat) onto the tent, we would just give up on sleep and pack up.
This was definitely a lesson that if something is beautiful on the outside, its not always beautiful within!
To add to our 'difficult' night, I headed to the toilets before bed which were a short 5 minute walk away. I was a British Buffet special during this walk and ended up with a lot of very large and painful mosquito bites the next day. I also met this 'little' guy on the way, who was luckily dead (Lee took the picture the next day in the light):
You definitely could have done with a quieter night the night after the night before 🤫😴 😠xx
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