The woman at the guest center corrects me immediately. "We're not a park. We're a recreation area. Part of federal wildlands."
The rebuke stung, but would become understandable to me in short order. Land Between the Lakes is on the border of Kentucky and Tennessee. The location is huge. I take 40 minutes to reach the turn for our cabin location. Another 20 minutes go before me and David reach the cabin. By the time I traverse the winding roads, pass by grazing Bison in a field, an Elk Sanctuary, and dozens of signs pointing, directing visitors to every outdoor activity known to man, I understand the attendant’s comment.
A park is a place for picnics, light camping, or girl scout meets. Land Between the Lakes is a massive 170,000-acre outdoor playground. Visitors can backpack, hunt, fish, visit an 1840s farm, boat and kayak, camp, and there is even target shooting, which I missed.
The sheer range of things to do is staggering. A family could plan an outdoor trip for a week and never leave the park. The first order of business for us would be the ten-mile bike route in the park. I had spied the map of the route in the visitor center and was dying to get on the bikes. My grand scheme was not even close to being a reality. This grand adventure was fast becoming a boring car ride. I wanted to bike, not drive. There was plenty of light left in the day and so once we were settled in our cabin, I headed to the bike trail.
I was excited. David was not.
As soon as it became obvious what I intended for us to do, he sulked. To say this was annoying would be an understatement. I had explained to him clearly what we were doing. I was clear that if he insisted on coming with me, he would have to bike and this is why I bought him a bike. But I guess this is what talking to teenagers is like. You tell them something a thousand times and they still act like the conversation never occurred.
We barely made it a mile before David fell behind and then fell off his bike. He was not seriously hurt. It happened only while trying to get on the bike, but it set the tone. We continued for another half mile before I stopped and told him we were turning around. He looked relieved, but fell once more before we got to the car.
If you ask David, he will tell you with strong indignant, he knows how to ride a bike. And he does. Which is why I do not understand why he was falling. We had ridden his bike several times at home in five and three-mile stretches and he never fell. Now anyone can fall off a bike. It happens to everyone, but this did not add up to me. I made sure there were only scrapes and bruises on him before I secured the bikes and headed to the Bison and Elk Prairie.
The prairie is a 700-acre enclosure where the elk and bison roam free range. It operates like a drive through attraction in the sense that you complete a loop that might be one or two miles. Obviously, visitors only see a small portion of the Prairie.
There are a few locations that provide great lookout points onto grazing areas. Each one has a sign with clear warnings to get back into your car if a bison is withing 50 feet of you. I found the signs ominous but unnecessary during our visit. Not a single free range Alpha Bison was to be seen. The herd was completely a ghost.
One bull elk teased us with a quick appearance, but nothing like anyone would hope to see, which is one in front of your car. Turkeys are the only wild animals that kept making appearances; even after driving around the loop twice.
With the herd hiding somewhere in the woods, we called it a night and went back to the cabin. David had wrestling to watch on his iPad and I needed to make dinner. This is where a true camping experience bloomed.
I bought and installed a portable fridge/freezer in the car. That meant I could cook proper food. I grilled up some chicken and Italian sausages. The grill I used is a Eureka grill, powered by butane. I love it. It is compact and cooks quickly. I also used a Jet boil to make some noodles.
David was less impressed with dinner. He ate like he was sitting at a fast-food restaurant—and not the good kind. Worst—at least for him—the hotspot I bought so he could get on the internet was not connecting. Three minutes of his WWE would play and then freeze.
The annoyance coming off him could practically be a separate person.
In short order, we called it a night. I spent the next few hours uncomfortably in the sleeping bag and listening to David complain about having to walk in the dark to the bathroom.
As morning arrived, I felt it was best to get a move on, but there were two things I wanted to see before we left the recreation area. We went through the bison and elk prayer one more time with the same results. Nothing to be seen.
The last item on the list was the 1850s working farm. Rather than a bland recreation of life in the 1800s, Land Between the Lakes has the farm and workers engaged in work as an 1800s farmer. The tools used to grow the vegetables are from that era. They have chickens and pigs on site and have them pended in as they did in early century farms.
One worker was preparing to roast a quarter of hog with rosemary on a wood-burning stove. Another worker was sharpening 1800 century tools. Tools that needed to be fixed were worked on at the blacksmith shop—which was surprisingly small.
It was an educational experience. Walking through the old-style homes and looking at the tools needed to live daily life makes you happy to be born in this century. I cannot help but imagine the life of a slave at that time, or even the lives of the average white farmer. They do not teach many people how few families had slaves in America. Most families did not, and so their lives were nearly as hard.
The resiliency of both groups to live, survive, and even build families is a core of strength missing in the population today.
