Countdown, Day 4: The Outing

I didn't get to do very much today for my creative time, just a little pencil drawing that I'm not done with...but I missed out for a good reason!

When I got home from work today, my husband asked me if I wanted to drive up to the lake.  Even though it's only about 20 minutes away from our house, we haven't driven up to the lake in a couple years.  I don't know how time runs away like that!  It was a big surprise for me, because my husband does not tend to be the most spontaneous person.  Usually there's a couple weeks worth of time between him mentioning doing something and us actually doing it.  It's one of the things that drive me crazy about him!  If I think of something to do, I just go do it; there doesn't need to be a plan.  It's one of the things about me that drives him crazy!

So here are a couple pictures so that you can see what will hopefully be inspiring some art in the next couple days:

Isn't it beautiful?  This is the lake, Lake Watauga.  It's a man-made lake, with two dams, Wilber Dam and Watauga Dam.  I'm so silly, I didn't take any pictures of the dams for you all, but they're there, I promise!

Another lake view.  Something that's kind of neat about the lake is that to make it, they flooded a town (Butler, Tennessee).  Apparently, you can go scuba diving in the lake and the houses and other buildings are still standing under the water!  The funny thing is that there is another nearby town named Butler...I guess those original Butler people weren't ready to give up on that town name! 

We were lucky (lucky ducks, if you will...ha ha ha) enough to see this little family...the dad was nearby, but wouldn't get close enough for me to get a good shot of the whole group.  They were all just quacking away...it was so cute!  It's funny to see the little ducklings going into the water; it was so sweet!  The mother let the babies get very close to us, just a few feet away!  

And then we saw THIS family of Canada Geese.  There were only 3 adult geese and 13 babies!  That doesn't seem normal to me...usually I see a bunch of adults and a couple babies in the group.  They were cute ...they would run and stick their little wings up in the air...I love to see them do that!  The geese were NOT as trusting as the ducks...I was trying to get a better picture of them, but no matter how slowly I walked, they would walk away just as slowly.  I've seen geese go after people (a lot faster than ducks will), so I wasn't going to push my luck!  I just zoomed in as much as I could and had to be satisfied with that!

Then we saw this log in the water.  I tried to convince my husband to go in and get it for me, but he wasn't very willing.  The water is still very cold...and he can't swim.  I told him I'd hold his legs and just kind of swing the rest of him toward it, but he didn't think that was a good idea either...for some reason...  I was very sad, because I think it would have made a cool table or seat for our porch.  I bet it would have weighed a ton anyway and I would have had to drag it up a steep hill to the parking area.  I'm still a little sad about it though, I'm not gonna lie!  On the positive side, I did find a much smaller piece of drift wood, so I brought it home and will be doing something creative with it...I have a couple ideas, but I'm not quite set on which thing I'll do just yet...  It will be a mystery till then, I guess!

I wanted to take a picture of these stairs, just because I think they're neat.  I've liked them since the first time I ever went to Watauga Lake about 10 years ago.  I don't know what it is, but I just love them and had to share!

This is another view of the lake.  That blurry thing in the water was a guy on a jet ski.  I wish we had still been down by the water when he came though...I would have asked him to drag that log over to the shore!  If you look to the right of the picture, you can see a little piece of Wilber Dam.  Watauga Dam looks more like a normal Dam...Wilber looks like a big pile of gravel.

As you can see in this picture, the lake is not usually this high.  We've gotten quite a bit of rain so far this year, and this is the highest I've ever seen the lake!  You can see the trees coming out of the water.  There is about 15-20 feet of rocks from where those trees are to the edge of the water.  Like I said, it's REALLY high!  My husband tried to teach me how to skip rocks across the water, but I am an epic failure at it!  No matter how hard I try, I can just get them to skip once...maybe I just need more practice.

As we were leaving, this little guy came out of the forest and was wondering around.  The picture is dark and blurry because my husband rolled up the window while I was trying to get the picture.  He was convinced that the raccoon was going to jump in the car and give us both rabies or something...so he rolled up the window and sped away.  I don't know why he had to speed away, it's not like the raccoon was going to open the car door or anything!  I guess he just likes to play it safe.  I'm the opposite.  I was trying to open the car door and get out so I could take a better picture.  I think that means that if one of us does get rabies in the end, it will probably be me!

Getting to go to the lake was a nice surprise for me!  It was definitely a fun way to end a work day.  I don't know why we don't do things like this more often.  I guess life gets in the way of fun stuff sometimes.  But today proved to me that it doesn't have to be that way!  I will work on getting out in the world a little more, and not be such a hermit, huddled over my desk doing arts and crafts.  It's nice to get out and and breath fresh air into the lungs and fresh inspiration into the brain...and trust me, my poor little brain needs all the help it can get!