Bison at Land between the Lakes

Friday June 10
Today was the last day of our mission trip to Mayfield Kentucky. We worked the morning, starting soon after 8.30, and finishing a little before noon. After lunch, we went our separate ways, having driven down in three cars. Before returning home, Roger and I decided to go for a drive through nearby Land between the Lakes in Tennessee. Land Between the Lakes is a United States national recreation area in Kentucky and Tennessee between Lake Barkley and Kentucky Lake. The Tennessee and Cumberland rivers flow very close to each other in the northwestern corner of Middle Tennessee and Western Kentucky, separated by a narrow and mostly low ridge. The area of land that separates the two bodies of water has been known as "Between the Rivers" since the 1830s or 1840s. During the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Tennessee Valley Authority as part of his New Deal. Specifically, the Authority was to construct a series of dams for both flood control and generation of electricity throughout the rural Tennessee Valley. The project would provide much needed jobs for men in the area, as well as provide electricity to a large area that lacked it. With the US entry into World War II, the project was also needed to satisfy electrical demand from the aluminum industry for the war effort. Whilst originally managed by the Tennessee Valley Authority, the recreation area was later transferred to the administration of the United States Forest Service. There are numerous campgrounds, boat docks and miles of hiking and bridle trails. One of the attractions in this great expanse of land is a 700 acre Bison and Elk enclosure, which you can drive through, which opened in 1996. The first time we drove through the area, we didn’t see a single bison, even though by now it was mid to late afternoon, which the signs said was a good time to see them. We had no sooner driven out the gate, when we could see them coming out of the trees and heading toward the road! So we turned around and went back in. As you can see in a couple of my photos, there were quite a number of young amongst them. They just sauntered along, quite oblivious to the traffic, often coming right up to the cars!