Finally, I have a weekend off! Two whole days, I feel like I'm on vacation. I decided to go out carousing when I got off work this morning and wound up at Big Bone Lick State Park.

Seems I wasn't the only one carousing this morning. There was a hawk (either a Cooper's Hawk or Sharp-shinned Hawk, I can never tell the difference) hanging out with the crows....

This is very unseemly behavior and once the hawk realized the Paparazzi was on hand, he fled away in shame, just like John Paulk....

I arrived about 9:00am, just in time to catch the last of the mist rising off the lake....

Don't ask me what kind of bird that is. I was taking a picture of the mist and it flew right into my shot. Those white things that seem to be hovering in the air are spider webs on the trees in the shadows....

Here's another shot of the misty lake, this time without any interloping birds or spiders....

Speaking of interloping birds, I decided I would take a dignified self portrait with the misty lake as a background. Just as I took the picture, those blasted crows flew right overhead cawing their backsides off....

There were also some dragonflies out carousing this morning....

And the bluejays made as much racket as the crows....

I had a heck of a time getting a shot of this turtle sunbathing. When I first saw him, I was on the wrong side of the log and there were too many branches in the way for a good shot, so I had to sneak around to the other side of the log without scaring him away. Took me about a half hour. Turtles are very sensitive to vibration, so the moment a big fat human like me takes one step, the turtle will sense it and dive in...

Fortunately, I'm very easily distracted, so while I was inching my way around to the other side of the log, I kept seeing things I just had to stop and look at. That made my progress so slow, the turtle never noticed a thing. In fact, by the time I got where I wanted to be, one of his buddies climbed up on the log and shouted a hearty greeting....

The turtle log....

All those nights checking the trailers in the north lot at work have finally paid off. There are deer in the woods around the plant. I see them sometimes at night and hear them making their noises to warn each other of the strange human lurking about. As I was coming back from the lake, I recognized that same noise and starting following it to the deer and finally got a half decent deer picture. This is the first time I've ever been able to get a picture of one where you could actually tell what you were looking at....