And a reverse sunset (looking east) from the backyad.
https://flic.kr/p/2s2xUJF
A reflection of the sky at Tulsa’s Lafortune Park. I think I used the Becasso filter on this.
And a pond at the Turkey Mountain Wilderness Area. Another Becasso filter.
And a jigsaw puzzle I recently completed. It took me a while to figure it out.
https://flic.kr/p/FCutPQ
And from ten years ago. I saw this threatening sky on an after work run on Turkey Mountain. Luckily this was to the east so I wasn’t threatened. I would hate to be on the other side of those clouds.
Spring in Oklahoma is not for the faint of heart. In the Tulsa area we had eight tornadoes recently. Lots of damage but no fatalities at least.
The skies of spring are often twisting and turning and giving off that strange green glow that signifies that nothing good is in store.
It makes for interesting photo opportunities though.
Plus the wind blows harder. The wind always blows in Oklahoma but the spring winds are fearsome. Makes for hard bicycle riding when you are going against them. I’ve learned not to fight going into wind. I just gear down and go slower. It’s not a contest. When I turn around and go with the wind I fly with the wind.
A couple weeks ago I felt like moving around so I ventured off to Tulsa’s Oxley Nature Center on an overcast day to wander around and see what I could see.
Oxley during the week is great. Nobody is there!! I didn’t see too many critters though. Oh well.
They have great flat trails there. Hardly a rock to trip over anywhere. Don’t worry I trip over roots, stubs, branches, and my own feet.
A repurposed major highway cuts through Oxley as a big wide, sustainable trail. I’ve seen lots of critters from this over the years when the trails are really too muddy to walk on.
I found me a big mess of fungi. Google lens tells me that this could be turkey tail. They gave several other possibilities and I picked Turkey Tail cuz I liked the name.
I come across a bridge with its own poem. It’s called “This Drop” by Sasha A. Martin. She was the “Artist in Residence” at Oxley a few years ago. I never met her but I would like to do so.
When she left they posted her poems all over Oxley. I always love seeing them. She is on instagram and her handle is @thatsashamartin. She is super talented.
The birds were out chirping away but I couldn’t get more than a glimpse of any of them except for the cardinals. They are hard to miss but they don’t wait long enough for me to focus and get a photo. Still it was nice having the Merlin App so I could figure out what they are.
Another nice surprise was the lakes, creeks, and marshes being full of water. I couldn’t quite figure it out until I said something on social media about it and then several people piped up and said that the low water dam holding water on the park had failed in the last year or two and they finally got it repaired and working again a few months ago. I was like, ohh. I pride myself on knowing what is going with stuff like that and everyone but me knew.
My pride will recover, in the meantime I am happy with the water being restored to Oxley.
I love boardwalks across marshes.
Here is the Nature Center at the Nature Center. Very well informed volunteers hang out there. I usually bypass it because I know where I am going. If I had stopped and asked why the low water, I am sure they would have told me.
Here is my wibble wobbling route on my hike. About 2.7 miles or so I think.
Earlier in February on a nice day a group of volunteers from the Tulsa Urban Wilderness Coalition joined staff members from the Nature Conservancy to do some trail work the Conservancy’s newest preserve in Oklahoma, the Pearl Jackson Crosstimbers Preserve in Creek County, Oklahoma, just 20 or so miles from Tulsa. The Preserve, which is not yet open to the public, is 12,000 acres of hickory and oak intermixed with tallgrass prairie. The previous landowners had used fire to control invasive species and the land is in really good shape. The man who donated, what had been a ranch, to the Conservancy gave up fortune in development. Such generosity blows my mind.
So we all met in the Conservancy’s office on the property and got a briefing on the work to be done. The staff had started a rough trail from a proposed trailhead to a sporadic waterfall. So we were going to take loppers, saws, axes, pick axes, and other tools to remove limbs blocking the way and rocks that were on the trail. The trailhead was about a mile from the office so we shuttled people down there in four wheel drives.
My Subaru, with 77,000 miles, finally got a little mud on it as I took people down to the trailhead.
So we took off down the proposed trail doing our thing. I am guessing the trail was about a mile.
The land is gorgeous. Very rocky and extremely old hickory and oak trees.
Down at the waterfall. No water over it today as it hadn’t rained recently.
And here is the intermittent waterway that bring water to the waterfall.
Tulsa Urban Wilderness Coalition Photo
And a good time was had by all. The staff said that they plan to open portions of the preserve to the public but they have a lot of issues to work out beforehand. I’m guessing that it is going to be a least a year or two.
The weather is warming up fast these days. Just ten days ago we had snow everywhere, now it is almost all gone and we have balmy temps. These pics are from a hike about a week ago around Tulsa’s Lafortune Park on their 3 mile path.
My favorite tree at Lafortune Park. It makes for a great photo all four season. I love the reflections as well. We have a little ice in this photo.
And a little bit more ice near the playgrounds.
And at the duck pond.
And a decent sunrise from our backyard. Our little terrier Sadie gets me up every morning for the sunrise.
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.
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?
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.
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
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.
And a beautiful lifeguard shack on the ocean at sunset. Ignore the US flag flying in a funny manner.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
