butterflies

We took a road trip to Nashville, Tennessee for personal stuff and went back home on the Natchez Trace starting at the very end, well almost we missed it by 6 miles.  So we have traveled  about half of the Trace. We also stopped at one of the homes  James Polk  President of the US lived.  He stayed there for a time and had a law office just down the way. This is the only home standing that he lived in.  He was a very interesting man and a good president.  One of his campaign promises was to be President for one term because he believed the President should devote his time to the country and the job he was elected for, not to running for election so one term was it.  He was also the only President to complete all of his campaign promises.  He left the White House and died 3 months later.  He believed that the US should expand its borders to include Texas, Oregon, Washington and California.  He did a lot to make us the great big country we are now.
We saw some interesting things, but I did it again and left the camera pic card in the computer when I down loaded the last pics.  We do have two cards so I will put the extra card in the car and leave it there for days like this.  

So instead of Trace pics here are some butterfly and bee beauties.

Butterflies and bees, what amazing creatures!  I have put together my butterfly and bee collection for you to see.  Some of the butterflies were very tame and climbed on my finger.   I would have taken a pic of it actually on my finger, but it is hard to one hand the camera and get that great shot.   I am good, but I do have some limits. LOL  You can see how close I got with the pic of me almost capturing it my hand.  I really was not trying, but I think I could have.  I did not want to hurt his gorgeous delicate wings. 

The gangs all here.  There would be so many butterflies on this one grouping of thistles and not just one kind of butterfly

In flight

This is the lone Monarch Butterfly.  I did not see another one the whole time

 

 

 

Another incoming.  Also so many on one little puff of a flower

 

We only spotted this kind of butterfly puddling on the pea gravel at the rv site.  I learned this is called puddling from a visit to a butterfly exhibit.

 

We spotted this guy on an overlook off the Blue Ridge Parkway.

This is a type of moth.  Notice you can see through his wings. 

He looks and acts hummingbird like.

You will see a moth, Swallowtail butterfly, small butterfly, and a bee in this pic.

There were also many opportunities to photograph bees.  This guy was huge.

Some neat in flight pics

I love my camera because I can put it in sports mode and snap pics as fast as the camera can keep up.  It can take pics until I let up on the button.  You can get some amazing pics that way.  To get that one amazing pic one must take a lot of pics.  Now days with digital cameras this is so possible.  I bet I have taken 400 to 600 pics of just butterflies and bees a lone.  Of course most of the pics I pressed the delete button because they are just not any good or too many of the same kind of shot.

I have so many incredible pics I would love to share, but I know I have to select just a few.  Most of these pics were taken very close to our RV site at Stone Mountain State Park, North Carolina and around just a small group of plants.   Most of the flowers the butterflies are sucking the nectar from are thistle. 

This cartoon is only here because it is bug related.  Please do not use on butterflies.