Saturday, June 2, 2018

The plan was to leave the house by 6 AM to attempt some bird photography in Cove Lake State Park, which is located about 20 miles north of Knoxville, Tennesee.   Marcy had heard this was a good place for birds and after checking the Internet, we decided to go for it.   This last week of May had been very rainy here, so the atmosphere was saturated and left us with a very foggy Saturday morning.    We pretty much had the Interstate to ourselves and we arrived at Cove Lake just before 7 AM, with many of the gates still locked.  The fog did not burn off until after 9 AM, but it was fun trying to capture some misty ethereal-looking scenes.  I didn’t get what I wanted with the fog pictures, but otherwise, I think we wound up with some decent shots.  – Especially the pileated woodpecker, which are hard to capture because they spook so easily.   We finally hung it up at around 9:30 and headed down the road just a few miles to Norris Dam State Park.   The park’s namesake is one of the first construction projects of the Great Depression Era Tennessee Valley Authority system and figures to be a premier recreation spot in East Tennessee