We went to see Instant Family over the weekend. A great movie about a childless couple who decide to adopt a group of three siblings. They sure didn’t know what they were getting themselves into as they deal with various “issues”with the three kids of widely varying ages who had been bouncing around “the system” for some time. I really love this movie and recommend it highly.
We are having some great weather right now. Sunny, almost warm, so Logan and I went exploring on Saturday in some urban woods. They are not a park, it is undeveloped private land. We were geocaching.
Their used to be houses here I think. Note the phone box out in the middle of nowhere.
I found the first stage of a multistage cache. The clue to the next location was a underlined letters in a Hardy Boys detective novel. Logan had to wait while I went through the novel and copied down the underlined words into my note book. The letters told a riddle that I think I have solved except you know the answer is a word and I need a bunch of numbers because I am looking for GPS coordinates!
We set that issue aside and went looking for another cache and found it. It Is a lot fancier than most of the caches we find. Some geocachers really put a lot of work into their hides.
So we only found one, but the fun is in the looking, at least for me. For Logan, the fun is getting back home.
I am linking with Our World Tuesday!
At lunch I went to the Tulsa suburb of Sperry, Oklahoma, a dozen or so miles north of Tulsa. They have a rails to trails project, the Osage Prairie Trail run right through town. Its a great place to take your bicycle. I found a cache called “Railroaded” near where I took this photo.
I was going to do a little geocaching while there. I ran across this sign at the first place I parked. Oops!! Luckily there were no geocaches around the sign and the weather is kind of cold. Also, there are lots of snakes in Oklahoma in areas where there are no signs.
One of the caches I found was called “Dress Up” it had some items you could wear and post on the cache page. I kind of liked these glasses, especially with the hat. I almost kept them.
There was another cache named “baby cache” about fifty feet away from this old gas station. I love the rock exterior. A scene from the movie “The Outsiders” was filmed here.
On my way back to the office I found this “hay bale art” out by the highway. Obviously whoever put it up is one of those crazy people who like snow. Who in their right mind, over 12 years old likes snow? Only ice is worse than snow. And tornadoes, and earthquakes. How come we have all the bad stuff in Oklahoma.
Not bad for a lunch hour, huh?
This is a view from the office. Back on standard time and the days getting shorter we are starting to get more colorful skies. One of the very few benefits of losing daylight savings time as far as I am concerned.
Speaking of daylight savings time, I come across this sun dial recently that was an hour off. What’s up with that? How do you adjust it. That thing is grouted in. I thought I could discreetly rotate it to get the time right but it is not budging.
So that’s about it for this week. I am linking with Skywatch Friday
Tuesday morning the sun was coming up in the neighborhood and so I grabbed a leaf and occluded the sun with it. I am an arty kind of guy you know. Especially the easy kind of art like this. I don’t think of it as being lazy, I think it is being efficient.
On my way out of the neighborhood I stopped at the greenbelt and snapped another pic of the sunrise. The greenbelt starts close to our back fence and loops around to the road I am stood on to take this photo.
Sunday night during our front that moved through with strong winds and icy temperatures we noticed that our Pomeranian, Rascal had disappeared. Further notice showed that our gate to the greenbelt had blown open with the wind. So I was walking in the pitch dark with a flashlight yelling “Rascal” over and over. Heather had started in a different direction doing the same thing.
I left the greenbelt and was looking for the dog on a street when Heather picked me up and dropped me off at the house so I could enlist social media to help. I put together a facebook post and sent it off and then a similar NextDoor post. It was pretty amazing. We started getting responses right away and it turns out that Rascal had walked up to a couple putting up Christmas Tree lights and they took him in and posted something on facebook that somebody else reposted on next door and then somebody else let me know about the other post, and we were re-united fairly quickly which was kind of amazing because I thought we had lost him for good. Say what you want about Social Media but I like it and it does have its uses.
I am linking with Skywatch Friday
The Saturday after Thanksgiving I took brother Bob from Tennessee and my son Logan to Woolaroc about an hour north of Tulsa. Woolaroc is a combined wildlife preserve and art museum that used to be the retreat of Frank Philips, the founder of Phillips Petroleum. It is fabulous and is literally out in the middle of nowhere but worth it to get there. Check on the link above and it will tell you all about how to get there, hours, and everything else you need to know.
A bison chilling out on a warm November afternoon
On our drive in a bunch of bison were leaving. I don’t know if they knew something we didn’t.
The museum was all decked out for Christmas. That is Frank Phillips’ statue next to the tree. I told Logan to go see if any of those wrapped packages had my name on it, but he doesn’t listen to me any more. I don’t blame him.
Lots of great art in the museum. “The Trail of Tears” by Robert Lindneaux is one of my favorites depicting the forced removal of Native Americans from the southeast USA to Indian Territory in what is now Oklahoma.
In addition to art there is some historical memorabilia of Phillips Petroleum and the energy industry in general.
And then we wandered over to the barn to look at the critters there. My favorite was this shy miniature horse.
And then over to the Lodge where Frank entertained his cronies. Lots of stories about high stakes poker with oil leases and even companies won and lost during the course of an evening.
On the way out of town I got a shot of Bob in front of this 66 sign. Bob turned 66 the day before.
By the way, the building behind the sign is the Price Tower, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. It is the only high rise designed by Wright, that actually got built. Read more about it here.
I am linking with Our World Tuesday
We have had a lot of cool days with blue skies lately and I have spent as much time as I can outdoors. Above is a tree that has already lost all of its leaves at Tulsa’s Mohawk Park.
In a more forested part of the park there are a lot more leaves, and a lot less bugs and snakes than just a month ago.
Some more blue sky from a lunchtime excursion into a slot canyon at Chandler Park.
And some leaves and blue sky at Tulsa’s Turkey Mountain Urban Wilderness Area.
Have a Great Thanksgiving Day!! And spend some time outside if you can.
I am linking with Skywatch Friday
Friday morning I was getting coffee and I noticed the old abandoned Oral Roberts Ministries building just south of downtown Tulsa. It used to be called the Abundant Life Building. It has another owner now and they have not done anything and it just keeps getting seedier and seedier looking.
Friday at noon found me scrambling over these rocks looking for a geocache in the slot canyons of Chandler Park. I didn’t find it but I had a good time. This time of year is when I like look for caches like this because the snakes are dormant.
This tree with Fall Color charmed deep in the canyon I was in. I am always amazed at how life seeks to survive.
On a little outing on Saturday I came upon this gravestone. I like gravestones with a personal touch.
Near one of Tulsa’s latest big box shopping centers I come upon this hidden pond. I love little things like this in an urban area. Nature is never too far away. We trip and stumble and she’ll take over.
Turn 180 degrees from the pond and I see this. An SUV from Idaho struck strangely on a Uhaul car cradle. I still don’t know how it ended up like this. It looks like it had been there a while. I ventured up and looked in the windows halfway expecting a body but nope. It looks like it has been there for a while. Sometimes it is amazing how many out of the way places there are even in the big city. Where stuff happens away from prying eyes.
I wandered a short distance away to a hardware store where I saw these snowblowers on display. You know, I don’t need this kind of negativity here in Oklahoma.
I am linking with Our World Tuesday
We had our first snow of the season on Monday, the 12th. According to Oklahoma lore that means we will have twelve snows this year. That kind of depresses me a little bit. I find nothing romantic about snow at all.
Things got cold and that is a good thing. I have revved my geocaching lately and I love cold weather. All the snakes and bugs are no longer a problem and the brush dies back. I have about 1574 caches found over the last 14 years. I want to get to 2000 in a year. What is geocaching you ask? It is basically a game where people hid containers out in the world with paper log books (caches) using GPS receivers to determine the coordinates and then they post those coordinates on geocaching.com and other people go find them and sign the paper cache and log on to the cache’s page and log again there. Check out geocaching.com or a post geocaching 101 I made several years ago.
I find it a lot of fun and very challenging. Geocaches are everywhere.
Here is a map of geocaches within a few miles of our home. The yellow smilies are ones I found. The green boxes are the caches I haven’t found the few blue frowns are ones I looked for and did not find. The question marks are mystery caches where a puzzle hast to be solved to find the cache. I have hidden 32 caches myself. I think there are about three million in the world now.
Anyway, that is what I am up to. What are you up to these days?
I am linking with Skywatch Friday
I suscribe to Philbrook Museum‘s instagram feed and for weeks they have been posting images of a new “Installation” in the gardens at Philbrook of a 19th century cabin shingled with plasticized clothes and a fireplace made out of books. So I have been muttering to myself this whole time, “What are they up to now??? a cabin shingled with t shirts???” Them crazy artist types at it again.
So I ventured over there last week. We have a family membership. So I can check on those artist types whenever I want.
And yep, it is true. Philbrook has built a cabin out in the back 40 of their acreage and it has plastisized tshirts for shingles on the roof, and chinking in the logs, along with some LED lights. And a fireplace made out of books.
And they have some beautiful stained glass windows and some great many lights in the ceiling made out of found glass.
And you know what it all works. It was a dark, overcast day outside but inside it was bright and sunny and just plain wonderful. My iphone pics do not do it justice. It was a very bright happy place. Light was coming in everywhere but the floor!!
The artist behind all this is Karl Unnasch, who specializes in stained glass and all things considered with light.
This whole”Installation” thing is something new to me and it seems that Philbrook is doing more of these. They seem to be temporary and not meant to last forever and you know somehow it works for me. So I guess that I approve of this cabin and what the artist types are up to.
This installation is called “Slumgullion (The Venerate Outpost)” If you know what that means, please let us know. Or at least let me know since everybody but me seems to think it makes perfect sense.
Check out Philbrook’s web site. They got all sorts of info on hours and what they are doing, which is considerable. You know they have two sites now, right?
It I am linking with Our World Tuesday.