Skywatch Friday – Life on the River

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From the end of my bike ride earlier this week. I love a little color in the sky.

The Arkansas River runs through the middle of Tulsa from North to South. We are lucky because a huge part of the River is a public park of one sort or another for miles and miles. So we have lots of bike trails, many on both sides of the river. I have either run or rode my bike or walked every inch of them. I have  never got tired of them.

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The 21st street bridge from far away.

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And up close. 

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The ONEOK Boathouse in the background with Peggy’s Pond. 

Tulsa’s brand new park A Gathering Place for Tulsa is right on the river. Check the link. The home page is basically a flyover of everything and you can see how intimately the park is integrated with the River.

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I love the ripples in the pond. See the tall grass across the way. Most of the park is planted in native prairie grasses so no mowing, a lot less water, and fertilizer, so less money spent on maintenance, less chemicals on the land and the river, better habitat for bugs and birds. Win-win-win. Sustainability to most Okies is how to maintain high flows from  older fracked wells. 

It has been open about 10 days and I have been there five days. That’s ratio that I would like to keep up. Looking at the video I mentioned above I saw about four or five things that I hadn’t seen yet.

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One of these days, maybe when it gets cold, and it isn’t so crowded I am going to come over here and climb the towers and do some exploring. I may forego the slide though. I think my outside diameter is greater than its inside diameter. That would be a problem.

It’s a great place to take photographs. There are all sorts of things, and angles, and reflections, and interesting structures to make photographs. So I hope you don’t get tired of it. You see I’m still pretty excited about the Gathering Place.

I am linking to Skywatch Friday this week.

16 thoughts on “Skywatch Friday – Life on the River”

  2. Barb

    Great to catch up with you Alan and see this new park. The water photos are beautiful. It still looks green there – it’s fall in Breckenridge.

  10. Alana

    Beautiful shots. I haven’t been to Tulsa since the early 80’s (when I lived in Northwest Arkansas near the Oklahoma border)and that was only to see the azaleas. If I ever make it back to Arkansas I will try to see some of the Arkansas River parks. The boathouse was my favorite.

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