Come one, come all... now is your chance to see the world through my eyes.

So Mom and I finally got around to going to Thousand Hills State Park. We would have went sooner, but of course, Dad wanted to tag along. He's all excited that they have 3 types of bass in the lake.

Anyway, you know me... so of course, I took random pictures :)

We were there no time at all ...and Dad started circling a tree. Well of course, I had to know why. To my surprise, he was chasing a skink. That's right, a SKINK. I'm like "a what? a STINK?" and he's like "no... a skink, a lizard, see!" So we catch the thing to take pictures of it. Heheh, it was so cute. Dad wanted to keep it but we let it go. Mom and I both agreed that we didnt know how to take care of a skink and even if I researched it, it would be best to let it live in it's home.

I know the pictures of the skink are blurry and bright. I'm sorry. My camera isnt the best and it was sunny and the thing kept squirming. I do have an awesome little movie clip I made of it running back to it's home. You can ask me if you want to see it.

And look closely, that's not a twig...that's the skink.

Skinks are diurnal and they like to climb out on rocks and logs. They eat insects, of course, but what surprises me is these little critters supposibly dont just eat your average crickets, grasshoppers, and small beetles. These things supposibly can also eat earthworms and caterpillars...I guess they slurp it down. But I want to know how they supposibly eat lizards and small mice. They seem oh, so small, to do that. However, I guess there are some diversity in breeds of these things.

It had like an orange color on it's chin. Dad believes it to be what is called a "golden skink", but I'm not so sure after searching on the net. I'm thinking it's actually an older female "5-lined" skink.

Either way:

Kingdom: Animal
Phylum: Chordate
Class: Reptile
Order: Squamata
Family: Scinidae
Genus: Eumeces
Species: my theory so far is that it's a 5-lined, so that would make it Eumeces fasciatus

*shrugs*

Anyway...on with the random pics :)

I always manage to find a quaint little creek.

These purple flowers were everywhere... and I do mean EVERYWHERE.

See? It looked like it was coming out of the rocks almost even.

You can see the contrast of some that some of them drew. One plant seemed to have about 3 shades of purple growing out.

I just thought that was a pretty picture.

The lake is really big and I totally have camping and fishing fever now.

Look how clear that water is!

Yes, that's WORMS. Why did I take a picture of WORMS? To be a smart ass because my Dad said I took pictures of everything *smirks*

Anyway, I have tons of pictures of the flowers. I have pictures of some yellows and whites and plenty more of the purple. I have some awesome tree pictures and more of the lake and creek.

Let's end with a pretty sky picture though....

Anyone up for some camping? :D