I went hiking at Tulsa’s Oxley Nature Center last week. I saw all sorts of stuff including a couple of shadowy trail bridges
I’m linking to Shadow Shot Sunday.
Shadowy Trail Bridges
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Saturday’s Critters – Kodi Goes Swimming and Other Fun Stuff
Our little Pomeranian Kodi loves to go swimming but his enthusiasm and joy are greater than his skill so when we take him swimming Heather has to hold on to him. Our rescue Terrier, Sadie, is not into swimming at all.
On another bike ride on the Arkansas RiverParks Trails here in Tulsa I captured these two great blue herons flying low over the water below Zink Dam.
A great egret fishing
And a bunch of great egrets and great blue herons trying to catch their breakfast.
I stopped at a bench on the trail to rest up adjacent to this sculpture of geese.
A couple weeks ago I worked “Monarchs on the Mountain” representing the Tulsa Urban Wilderness Coalition. TUWC was deeply embedded in the event. We are a co-sponsor. A couple of our board members were on the organizing committee, and another was the MC of the event. Another board member takes care of the online part of the event using our website. Monarchs on the mountain is festival celebrating Monarch Butterflies and all other pollinators and the monarch migration which is happening now.
My role (that’s not me in the photo) was to man the booth and tell people who TUWC is and what we do.
This is a diorama that another board member made a couple years ago where we illustrate Leave No Trace principles for kids. We have a little story about Hans and Hilda going on a hike with their dogs. So we talk about leashing animals, staying on the trails, don’t throw your apple cores and banana peels out into the woods in the mistaken belief that you are helping feed the animals. Those little brown round things at the bottom of the photo are dog poops, not cinnamon rolls, so we throw them out and ask, “What do you do when your dog poops in the woods?” Answer is of course that you bag it and dispose of properly.
Working the booth is a lot of fun. I’ll tell you one thing, we get lots of Girl Scouts come by and they have the life cycle of monarch butterflies and Leave No Trace principles down. I’m very impressed with them and their adult leadership.
I am linking up with Saturday’s Critters
Skywatching on the Arkansas River
In late July this year I went on a bike ride on the Arkansas River Trails here in Tulsa. I took a “good camera” along. I only take a good camera if there is no chance of rain.
Here is the Public Service Company Oklahoma’s Tulsa Power Station. They have two sources of natural gas to run the plant. I worked for one of the source pipelines for eight years and then I went to work for the other source pipeline.
And here is my bicycle with the Williams Crossing Bridge in the background. It is a beautiful pedestrian bridge that is only about two or three years old. It was named “Bridge of the Year 2026” by the American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) and the National Steel Bridge Alliance. Read all about it here. I checked on the bridge construction almost weekly while it was being built. It was fascinating to watch.
Above is a photo from September 2025 showing the bridge at night. It has one of those funky lighting systems that can do all sorts of colors.
There were rowers on the river that day. Used to be Tulsa had quite a rowing community at one time, then Covid came, and then came the reconstruction of the Zink Dam and the Williams Crossing Bridge so it is nice to see rowing on the river again.
21 plus miles. Not a bad ride for an old fat guy is what I think.
Switching gears to the home neighborhood.
A neighborhood sunset in late July. If I don’t feel like launching the drone then I walk across the street to our neighbor’s driveway to get the right angle. The street is straight east and west and the sunset in July is a little north of west so I have to get a little south to see it.
This is a reverse sunset looking east on another day catching the glow of storm front off in the distance.
Shadowy Geocaching
Those who have been following me know that I am a geocacher. Geocaching is a hobby where people go hide containers out in the world, recording the GPS coordinates and then get on geocaching.com and post the coordinates and other people try and find the containers using the coordinates. Geocachers both hide and find containers. Here is a help page at geocaching.com that explains it a lot better than I can on what the hobby is about and how to participate. There are two kinds of people in the world I have found. Those who once they find out what it is about find it fun and fascinating and those who find it pointless and illegal. I have been doing it for almost twenty years and I love it. I appreciate the generosity of the American taxpayers who have spent billions of dollars launching GPS satellites into orbit so i can find tupperware containers in the woods.
So this is an account of me finding a geocache last week. I haven’t done much finding this summer mainly because I have found almost all of them in my area and it’s been hot
So I started looking for the geocache near this playpark. This cache was a mystery cache that required me to solve an online jigsaw puzzle. I had been working a table at an environmental festival earlier that day so I wanted to get home, hydrate, and solve the puzzle in the comfort of my home A/C and cold drink in hand.
The tree and shadow behind the playpark.
So the next day I showed up with the coordinates and proceeded to head to what is called “ground zero” (aka GZ) the immediate area of the cache. GPS coordinates for civilian use are only accurate to +/- 15 ft or so geocaching is not just going to GZ and picking up the cache. You can end up looking for hours for it. One problem is that there is an art to getting accurate coordinates. It is not uncommon for objects to be 40 or 50 feet away from GZ. Anyway, I digress. This park had a food forest and a community garden. That was cool.
A shadowy tree
Entering the woods.
And a video of my search. I lucked out, the search only took me less than a minute and I didn’t encounter any snakes, spiders, wasps or other fun crawly things. In the container is a log book that you sign and date. Later, you get back online and log the find there as well. I have been to urgent care for several things in my geocaching career. Wasp stings lead the list, in Texas I got into a bunch of fire ants, I have had numerous thorn cuts. I have tripped and fallen, all sorts of fun stuff. Plus I have had several conversations with the police, sheriff’s deputies, and security guards about what I was doing and have encountered several unhoused people. In general, park authorities support geocaching because it gets people into remote areas of the parks. If I see signs of unhoused people living nearby then I just forget about the cache. The homeless have to live somewhere and I don’t want to upset them. Most of them just want to be left alone.
Walking back to the car, I came across this tree with a swirly shadow. If you look to the right sidebar of this page you will see a running count of my finds. This was my 2394th find. Sounds like a lot but I know people who have found more than ten times as many as that. I will kick up my activity later in the fall when the snakes go into their brumation.
So that’s an introduction to the world of geocaching. In geocacher circles, people who don’t know about geocaching are called muggles. From the Harry Potter book series where people who were not magicians were called muggles.
Sorry this took so long. I am linking with Shadow Shot Sunday.
Satururday’s Critters – Tulsa 26 September 2026 Edition
First up, a Mississippi Kite sitting on a powerline in our neighborhood greenbelt. I love their distinctive call and style of flying. Despite their fierce appearance what I read is that they don’t look for little mammals on the ground, they like to catch flying insects to eat.
I turned my Merlin App on for a few minutes a while back in the backyard. It has better ears than I have. It is amazing what it can do.
And a collection of sparrows on a fence that I photographed.
To finish this post off, “Hippo” by John Kearney in the Philbrook Museum Gardens here in Tulsa. It’s made of welded chrome bumpers. I love it.
I am linking with Saturday’s Critters
Summertime 2026 Skywatch
I am still way behind on posting my sky photos. These are from the last half of July
This is a neighborhood photo showing a front blowing through.
A sunset photo looking west from our neighborhood greenbelt.
A drone photo about 40 meters over our house looking west from Tulsa.
I was on a bike ride on a trail I hadn’t used in a long time. It’s closed, for repairs. It looks okay to me!
A view from a bridge across the Arkansas River looking north. To the right is a complex of buildings that used to be the Oral Roberts Hospital and Medical School. They are now regular office buildings. The high rise to the left is the Muskogee Creek Nation River Spirit Casino.
Here’s a closeup of the Casino from the bike trail around the riverside of the complex.
And from the same trail only a couple miles north is a view across the Arkansas River to Turkey Mountain.
And July’s Full Buck Moon. I love moon photos. I have hundreds of them.
And this is a drone shot that I modified by having a program called Dynamic Auto Painter using a modernist acrylic techniques. It’s not AI. DAP has been around a long time before AI ever showed up. I kind of like how it turned out.
I am linking to Skywatch Friday.
September 17 Over the Years
A video of various photos I have taken over the years on September 17
Philbrook Museum: Matching Up the Abstract and the Real
2026 is the 100th Anniversary of the founding of Route 66 and there have been a bunch of commemorations, celebrations, and parades and Tulsa’s Philbrook Museum of Art has jumped in with an offerring of their own showing how Route 66 and Modernist Painting have grown up together. My brain locks up trying to think about it but I think it works. If you are not getting brain lock every now and then then your brain dies and that is not good.
We start out with a vintage Ford Model T. There we go, I am relaxing already. I’ve seen a bunch of these before.
The early days. The Depression. My parents were children of the Depression and it marked them and their generation for life and they passed some of the trauma on to their kids. I’m generally a happy person but I also believe that things can get worse and often do.
Here we have Figural Abstraction by Eugenie Baizerman – 1945+/-. We’re out of the depression but it is close. Here is an abstract piece that I get. The figures in it seem to move to me.
The 1950’s came around (and so did I). The economy is getting better people have money, they are buying stuff and they are traveling to see the sights. To me this is the peak of Route 66.
And we have Gracie Hartigan’s – East River Drive – 1957. Another work that I love. It’s kind of a mess and I love the colors but I think I get the vibe of it.
Here’s the 1960’s. Note that the art shown is The-New-Designs by Grace Hartigan in 1951
Here is the perfect painting for the 1960’s: the Grand Tetons by Kay Walkingstick – 1969. I really like this one a lot. Don’t make me tell you why.
The 1970’s come. The freeways paralleling Route 66 get built. People jump on them to go where they want to faster. Otherwise the 70’s are mess; disco music, Howard Cosell, gas shortages, inflation, ugh. The art is: Untitled (VSF243) from Expansionist Series by Vivian Springford 1972. I actually like it although I don’t really understand it.
So hey if you have time and are in Tulsa go check out Philbrook. They always have something going on.
I’m linking with Through My Lens
Shadow Shot Sunday – The Sun is What Makes Shadows
Last week I had to use photos from my archives for my Shadow Shot Sunday post. Why is that? It was because I wasn’t getting outside very much in this heat. Usually when I am outside, walking, hiking, in the backyard, etc I take pictures of almost everything and almost everything outside, during the day, casts a shadow. If nothing else, I cast my own shadow. Now as I write this, it occurs to me that this is the lamest Eureka moment ever. I’m almost embarrassed for myself. But that is alright. I embarrass everyone I know my mere presence, its okay if I embarrass myself every once in a while.
So with my newfound comprehension I went in the backyard and took a photo of this spinner casting a shadow on our fence. I kind of like the light on the spinner also.
A few days later I was at Tulsa’s Philbrook Museum looking at an exhibition and afterwards decided to go on a spin around their gardens even since it was a little early and the heat had not showed up. First thing out the door is this shadow of a decorative feature on the cast iron rails.
And then I turned left and went down this long “tree tunnel” with its shade along the whole length.
And out into the gardens and first thing is this shadow cast by a planting.
And some restful chairs in the shade of the a large tree. I think it would be cool to take a book and read there once it gets a little cooler.
Philbrook recently opened their Tandy Pavillion out in the garden. It is mainly an event space but I love how much shade is on three sides of the building. Plus the air conditioning is heavenly and they have restrooms. When you are in your 70’s it’s nice to have handy restrooms instead of trudging back up the hill to the main building. They also have a small exhibit of bird photographs on display.
They have all sorts of art on display in the gardens. I’ve always loved this. It is called Talisman by Oded Halahmy
I’ve always loved this structure in the gardens. It has a fountain to the left and it is always shady and restful.
And headed back into the main building I found this shadow on a bit of a patio. I love the contrasting pattern of the shadow and the pavers.
So anyway I have resolved to spend more time out of doors during the day even though my dermatologist tells me that the sun is trying to kill me. Sunscreen and wide brimmed hats are my friends!
And to be clear, many of my fellow photobloggers make great shadow photos indoors. I’ve done a bunch myself.
I am linking with Shadow Shot Sunday
Saturday’s Critters – Two is Company, Three’s Crowd Edition
We got out of the habit of taking the dogs on a morning walk this summer because it has been very hot, very early in the day. We got a temporary break in the weather a couple weeks ago so I took Sadie out for a morning jaunt. She was kind of unsure about it and kept her tail down and looking back over her shoulder.
Two red tailed hawks on a tall power pole in our neighborhood greenway.
I put my trail cam up on the fence and pointed it at the feeder cam. Some birds, like the mourning doves, don’t look good on the feeder cams because the wide angle lens make them look like short, fat, and squatty. A second look from a few feet away make them look awesome. Here it looks like dove is fighting off a sparrow.
Here we have two doves on the feeder with a third coming in hot. I don’t see room for him. Two’s company’s, three’s a crowd is the saying.
Squirrels are the bane of my existence on a feeder camera. Oh well, they have to eat also I guess.
And closing with the Welcome Bear at my former MIL’s back yard.
I’m linking with Saturday’s Critters