Nature Grrrls

Lest you think that all we are about is slowly cooked or deep fried hunks of animal flesh, vegetables steeped in the porky goodness of country ham, fast pickin' and gruesome history, let us assure you that nature was at work on our road trip.

I was prepared to find me some birds:

Just look at that Tilley. Can you say Canadian? Eh?

All you have to do is peek around corners...

... and you will find mockingbirds, goldfinches, purple finches, cardinals, house wrens, ruby-breasted hummingbirds, carolina wrens, wild turkeys, blue jays, brown thrashers, great blue herons, and turkey vultures (we saw a whole gang of them hanging out at the side of the road waiting for the coffee truck). You will also find enormous numbers of unidentifiable brown birds, all of them different.

We also went underground -- deep underground! 280 steep steps and 250 feet later we were in the depths of the ancient Mammoth Cave system, over the Tennessee border in Kentucky.

The caves --there are hundreds of miles of them, all natural and all used by archaic Indian civilizations-- are massive, and dark. It's hard to take a picture inside them. This is my favorite -- I didn't know Kelly was in the shot and after I got out of the cave it made me laugh and laugh. Actually, I still laugh whenever I see it:


Nature, when left to her own devices, is pretty cool.
Literally.

We saw some pretty beautiful stuff above-ground as well!