Skywatch Friday – On the Move Edition

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Me and a friend continue to hike on Turkey Mountain and other places. This is a moon gate leading into The Sanctuary section of Turkey Mountain. I go right through it, my friend goes around it. I don’t know why.

Turkey mountain has maybe nine lakes on it, plus two or three more in The Sanctuary. Anywhere else they would be called ponds. Three interesting things about the lakes (at least they are interesting to me) is, first, that the Wildlife Department stocks the lakes for fishing. Second there is a big colony of beavers on the mountain and they move as a group from lake to lake cleaning out all the fish in each pond. I think that is hilarious. Third, the beavers move up and down the Arkansas River and migrate to and from Turkey Mountain via Mooser Creek which is the northern border of Turkey Mountain. They know this because the wildlife has tagged a bunch of beavers so they can track their movements. I have a feeling that beavers are going to outlive humans.

This is a pipeline for one of my former employers running through Turkey Mountain. Last year another former employer of mine laid a pipeline adjacent to this one but they drilled the little swale you see instead of putting in a span like the one above. Drilling pipelines across tough spots has been all the rage for years. Contractors can now drill across the Mississippi River for large pipelines and hit the other side a mile away within a few feet of their target. They also do it in culturally sensitive areas like ruins and such. They can stand off a few hundred yards and drill way underneath the ruins instead of having to go around. The problem with going around is that you often run into more ruins.

The tree house in The Sanctuary. If you look close you can see a couple of swinging porch benches underneath. A nice place to wait out a rainstorm.

Anyway on this hike, it was almost exactly five miles. That’s my sweetspot.

Switching gears to the backyard. Sunrise!

Mid-day from my front yard looking east.

And a late sunset, looking west.

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Later that night, the Full Snow Moon. I love full moons on a clear night.

And a shot from the neighborhood green belt.

I’ve continued working on jigsaw puzzles on my ipad. I love beach scenes.

And a windmill jigsaw puzzle. The windmill is cool and I love the house. except not many windows upstairs. I like the lightning rods though. Random thought, I am sure that windmills get hit with lightning. Do they burn down?

I am linking with Skywatch Friday

Saturday’s Critters – Last of January 2026

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It has been very cold here in Tulsa after our snow. Sadie has finally adapted. She loves to go outside and run around in the snow.

It exhausts her though. So she falls asleep in my lap while I’m watching tv at night.

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Snow doesn’t phase our little Pom Kodi at all. We put him on a diet and it seems to be working so now he’s wanting to play fetch with me and Sadie, and he and Sadie chase each other around the house. He’s livened up quite a bit.

Male Northern Cardinal

I’ve been trying to keep the birds fed using suet balls and other high energy foods. This cardinal wasn’t complaining.

Carolina Wren

I think this is a Carolina Wren that came by for a bite.

We get dark eyed juncos both on the feeder and on the ground.

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There is something special about juncos.

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And the opposite for the quiet juncos at the bluejays. Squawk, squawk, they say whenever they visit,.

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A through the window photo.

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And we get lots of doves. This one is all puffed up against the cold.

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We had a bunch of hawks one afternoon. Noisy and boistrous.

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Lots of squirrels.

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That’s it for this week.

I’m linking with Eileen’s Saturday’s Critters. Check it out, lots of great photographers who love all sorts of animals.

Gilcrease Museum Skywatch

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A couple weeks ago I ventured out to Tulsa’s Gilcrease Museum for a public meeting they were having to get public input on their garden spaces. The museum building is above. It is completed but they have not finished all their displays and I think they are still working on offgassing all the fumes from the concrete’s dewatering, carpet glue, paint, varnish and other chemicals. Things that can be okay levels for humans can be deadly to art. They are opening it in 2027. So now they are working designing the gardens to go in the immediate vicinity of the museum.

The meeting was not held in the museum, it is in an adjacent museum housing all their historical archives. (Among there documents is an original of the Declaration of Independence. They have it on display on July 4th sometimes, and I got to view one year. Big thrill.)

They had a consulting Landscape Architect talk about gardens and their plans for it. I thought it was all very interesting. And he had a model of what they were talking about. I think it will all be very nice. They just need funding. He didn’t say a figure but hey, if you have a Gazillion Dollars you don’t know what to do with give them a call. I’m sure they’ll take it. The Director of the Museum told everyone, “There are no small donations.” Yeah, well, he hasn’t seen mine yet.

After the talk I decided to take a stroll at the park adjoining the museum, Stuart Park. It was closed during construction but is now reopened. Has been for some time.

It’s a favorite of mine. It winds around a couple ponds and incorporates a bunch of sculptures that are going to be relocated on gardens adjacent to the museum.

The museum has several hundred acres and they are going to build trails for bicycling and hiking. They need funding for that as well, in case you have a second tranche of gazillion dollars that you don’t need.

The backside of the new museum from Stuart Park.

The museum has already started a bunch of work. It looked like they had mulched a considerable amount of invasive species. What was left was this sign about leaving the bees alone. You can bet that if you called Gilcrease security they would come running out the museum to save you. Probably now, call 911 instead.

Seeing the park was like seeing an old friend after several years. I loved it.

The views are wonderful.

And I love any type of wood structures. They rebuilt this and others.

I’m looking forward to 2027. They demolished the original museum in mid 2021. I loved it but it was a hodgepodge of various buildings added onto over the years and had an antiquated air conditioning system which is not good for an art museum. The vistor traffic flow was awkward and had all different levels which is not good for disabled people. They then built the new building on the same footprint as the original.

It’s going to be awesome.

I’m linking with Skywatch Friday and galeria-himmelsblick

Shadow Shot Sunday – Through the Magic Portal

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A “Moon Gate” to a trail system here in Tulsa. I think they are kind of cool. Like symbolically passing into another dimension. My hiking friend hates them and walks around them. This time I noticed afterward it made an oval shadow. If I was more on the ball I could have captured more of the oval than what I did.

And on the other side of the moongate, we got these shadows on the trail. This was the Thursday before the polar vortex and the temp was in the high 50’s.

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Now it is about 7F and we have a few inches of snow. What a difference a day or two makes!

Stay warm folks!!

I am linking with Shadow Shot Sunday

Saturday’s Critters – Winter Storm Fern Edition

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My hiking friend and I went on a five mile hike on Tulsa’s Turkey Mountain on Thursday. The weather was almost shirtsleeve warm. We saw this great blue heron fishing in one of the ponds. All I had was my cell phone so sorry about the graininess.

After almost a year together our two dogs, Kodi the Pom, and Sadie the Terrier have almost started playing together. I guess if this were human kids it would be called adjacent play. They seem to enjoy each other’s company now.

Kodi hides under this table when my wife is gone. He always has such a tragic expression.

Lizzie checking on the goings on out in front of the house.

This fiberglass penguin has its own geocache.

Winter Storm Fern

Winter Storm Fern came to northeast Oklahoma last night. This was the scene this morning. Not too bad. Not even an inch of snow. We are supposed to get more later on today and tonight.

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And the backyard. Kodi the Pom got up this morning and went outside and did his business. He loves snow. Sadie is having a hard time. She wouldn’t do her business last night so she needed out at 3 am. I took her out and she peed and ran back into the house. She was in a world of hurt this morning. She needed to poop bad but wouldn’t go outside and wouldn’t go on a pad in the house. Finally I carried her out and plopped her in the middle of the yard and she saw a squirrel and she ran after it, completely forgetting about the snow, and then did her business. She felt so much better, she was running around the yard. (Sorry if this is TMI.)

We have a steady stream of visitors to the efeeder. Here is a short 12 second video of a male and female cardinal and a dark eyed junco taking advantage of the suet and seeds that I put out for them.

That’s it for now. We are staying home today and maybe tomorrow depending on road conditions. If you are in the winter storm, please stay safe.

I am linking with Eileen’s Saturday’s Critters. Lots of great bloggers post there, check them out.

Skywatching at Home

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Son Logan drives me around these days. So I get to take photos while he is driving like this sunset in the neighborhood.

Here is a skywatch photo from my front porch

And from the backyard

Another from the front porch looking west toward the sunset

And a skywatch photo from my driveway looking east.

While walking the dog in our neighborhood greenbelt

A sunrise looking east

Teton sunset jigsaw puzzle

And a jigsaw puzzle. These look like the Teton mountains in Wyoming.

And the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Along with a peacock.

And a jigsaw puzzle of a cool little cabin in the woods.

Lifeguard Station

And a beautiful lifeguard shack on the ocean at sunset. Ignore the US flag flying in a funny manner.

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Over 200 million Americans are going to get hit with a polar vortex in the next day or so. For Oklahoma it is going to be the worst since the 2011 winter storm. Here is an action shot of me shoveling snow in that storm.

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And here is an action shot of our Maine Coon Chrissy during the storm. She loved the fireplace. I don’t know how she didn’t spontaneously combust.

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I picked her up and took her outside after all the snow fell. You can tell that she was not a happy kitty. I’m glad I had my heavy canvas coat and leather gloves or may not have survived this photoshoot.

I’m linking to Skywatch Friday

To my fellow Americans in the path of the oncoming storm. Stay warm and safe!!

Saturday’s Critters – 17 January 2026

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I was in the backyard playing fetch with one of our dogs and I saw on our property fence a dog sweater moving along the top of the pickets. I was like uh! I saw then it was a squirrel running with a small dog’s sweater. I ran in the house to get my wife and she come running out and the squirrel had already jumped onto a tree and was trying mightily to get it up to a nest close to the top of the tree. By the time I got my good camera out it looked the sweater was stuck good on the various twigs on the tree.

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I left for a minute and came back out and the squirrel had the sweater unstuck and was stuffing it into the nest. I guess her babies are going to be nice and warm this winter. I have no idea where she go the sweater. Some years they attack our lawn furniture cushioning for nesting material.

And here is our queen B, Lizzie resting. Naps exhaust her so she has get up and rest every now and then.

Tulsa’s amazing Gilcrease Museum was shut down and demolished a few years ago and they built a new museum. The structure is complete but they are not going to open until 2027. They had a public input meeting concerning the landscaping around the immediate vicinity of the museum. They hired the same landscaper, Michael Van Valkengburgh Associates, that designed Tulsa’s Gathering Place and the Master Plan for the Turkey Mountain Urban Wilderness area, and they were giving a presentation for their concept of the gardens at Gilcrease. It’s a treat just listening to these guys talk. They know their stuff and one of the big things they are interested in is getting public input on the concepts. Check their web site at the link above and see some of the projects they have been involved in. (Oops, I diverge).

I got so excited about their plans that I went down into the backwoods are of Gilcrease that has recently reopened to the public to check out some of the sculptures they talked about in the presentation. I had not seen them for years so it was kind of like seeing old friends again.

So the plan is they are taking these sculptures that are scattered in the back woods and bring them up close to the museum so more people can see them. I second that plan. It was a one mile hike to see these and lots of people will not do that, or cannot do that.

I was at the At Home Store and saw these Easter Bunnies for sale. I felt they were a family and couldn’t believe they were breaking the family up for money. I guess that I could have bought them to keep them together forever but I know that wouldn’t go over well at home. So I just took a photo. Photos are still free in most stores. Some stores have signs that say no photos, but that just encourages me.

And then I ran the photo through a filter and posted it on instagram. I post everything on instagram. If you want to join me my tag is @yogiab.

Last week I brought the ebird feeder out from the garage, cleaned it out put it back up again and restocked it with bird food. I’ve had quite a few customers so far. This is a short video.

I also fired up my trailcam in the backyard and got a few stills and videos in this video. It is very short also.

That’s about it. I am linking with Saturday’s Critters.

Hiking the Keystone Ancient Forest’s Falls Trail

Me and a friend of mine have been going hiking together Friday mornings for a few months. Mainly on Turkey Mountain but we have branched out to the Mooser Creek Greenway and Oxley Nature Center. Early this month we decided to tackle the Falls Creek Trail at the Keystone Ancient Forest about 20 miles or so northwest of Tulsa. I have hiked some of the trails there and late last year participated in a trail cleanup day there but have never hiked the Falls Trail which is supposed to be very difficult.

So we got to the visitor center and was perusing the map when one the volunteers came out and we talked about the trail. He said parts of it were really difficult and rough but doable. On the map above the Visitor Center is at the upper right hand corner where the yellow and red trail come together. The Falls Trail is the orange trail that loops off of the red trail. The Falls Trail map is kind of scraggly. My experience is that trails that look scraggly on a map are pretty rough on foot.

So we walked down to the trailhead for the Falls Trail and ran into this warning sign. The guy at the visitor center said that they have quite a few rescue calls from the Falls Trail but that is mainly in the summer. He said people head in without water and not properly prepared and run into trouble.

The first mile or so was just winding through the woods but soon enough we encountered rocks and erosion and unstable footing. Onward we went, slowly. My hiking buddy moved way ahead of me as I was tip toeing through the rocks.

Here is a little overhang we encountered. I took a photo of this, and then I guess that I forgot about because I hit my head on it as I was going slowly watching my feet. It knocked me back and I lost my balance and fell on my back. No harm though, I wasn’t going fast so I didn’t even have a headache. I had a big bruise on my back. So I picked myself up and kept on going.

We went along a couple of ravines with some cool rock formations across the way.

My phone camera doesn’t give a good sense of the depth. There was probably about a 30 foot or so sheer drop off from the trail.

There was some water pooled up at the bottom of the ravine. I think the Falls are sporadic depending on recent rainfall.

This is the main falls. As you can see it is pretty dry. There is a pretty good dropoff on the other direction.

Past the Falls the trail was a lot easier. We took the clockwise direction on the trail. Turns out a friend of mine used to lead hikes at Keystone. He told me that most people take the clounterclockwise route to access the falls and then return the same way rather than complete the loop encountering the rough and rocky trails on the clockwise direction.

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So we had a lot of fun and enjoyed a scenic and challenging trail. So we’ll have to figure out where to go next.

The Keystone Ancient Forest is owned by the Nature Conservancy and administered by the Sand Springs, Oklahoma Parks and Recreation Department. Check their web site before you go because access, although free, is only open for certain hours per day. It’s a popular place on nice weekend days and their parking lot can fill up so plan accordingly. They have other easier trails to hike if you want to do something not quite as challenging as the Falls Trail. They even have an ADA compliant trail designed for wheelchair access and they have a couple of all-terrain track chairs to ensure access for everyone regardless of mobility issues.

I am linking with Skywatch Friday.