Seven Islands State Birding Park

I generally don't do much research until after we visit the park because I don't want to annoy my family with spouting out too much dry information, so as we drove up, we were all wondering: "What IS a birding park?"

Well, in case you were wondering, too, a birding park seems to be a park with lush overgrowth of lush vegetation, combined with lake water, which makes this land a perfect spot for animals- especially birds. There's more than seven miles of hiking, but because of the tons of flowers and plants, I was concerned we hadn't brought enough bug spray, so we stuck to the paved path, which was 1.25 miles from one end to the other, and back. The property itself is 400 acres outside of Knoxville, and was established in 2002. You can fish here, because there's 50 different species of fish. And, of course, there's bird watching! Apparently, over 200 species of bird have been spotted here.

As we were walking back to the car, about halfway up the paved path, I heard my mom gasp, and I turned to see a deer, deathly quiet, its face surrounded by flowers, staring at me- his face about four feet from mine. I very slowly begin to move my hand to reach for my phone in my pocket, and the two inches of movement on my part spooked him and he turned and lept into the wild. It was an AMAZING moment.