Category Archives: Skywatch Friday

Skywatch Friday- Flying Through the Air

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I went on a bike ride during a sunny, cool morning this week. It was glorious. I stopped here at the Arkansas River as it goes through Tulsa. That bridge going across the river is Williams Crossing, named for the corporation that donated about one gazillion dollars to build it. I saw some people gliding, almost flying across the bridge.

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This is them. They stopped at the western end. Two roller skaters and a scooter. No wonder they were so smooth looking going across.

This past week, I broke out the old drone and launched it from the backyard to get some skywatch shots.

Here you can see a front coming through.

I put this photo through a filter to get some color.

One day storm clouds were building up. I launched the drone but it started barking at me at about 15 meters warning of high winds. So this is a low level shot of the clouds. You can see that the drone is just a little above roof peak level and below the power lines. When the drone barks I listen to it. I don’t need it flying away in the wind. It almost got away from it once and I went through the recall procedure and it came back.

Here’s a street level photo looking east.

Another looking west.

That’s it for this week. Join me at Skywatch Friday

Skywatch Friday – Close to Home and Downtown

Some stormy skies one early evening in the neighborhood.

The morning after a stormy sky in the neighborhood. More threatening skies and a new roof going up.

On a dogwalk at our neighborhood greenbelt. A very sunny and bright afternoon. I love new leaves in the spring. Talk about fresh and green.

Tulsa Earth Day Celebration

On Earth Day I was manning a booth in downtown Tulsa representing the Tulsa Urban Wilderness Coalition. This is a view of the food trucks. It was also food truck Wednesday. I ended up getting some very spicy and flavorful Thai food.

I am linking with Skywatch Friday.

Rock Creek Route 66 Skywatch

Recently I went to the Tulsa suburb of Sapulpa to check out the Rock Creek Bridge. A must stop for Route 66 fans especially since this year is the 100th year of Route 66’s existence. The bridge is open to foot traffic only.

From there I ventured back into Sapulpa and found this Umbrella Alley. I love all the colors. The day I was there the wind was blowing pretty hard through the alley and the umbrellas were dancing. As they say in the musical “Oklahoma”

**“Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweepin’ down the plain,
And the wavin’ wheat can sure smell sweet,
When the wind comes right behind the rain.”**

If you love wind. Move to Oklahoma, we have lots for everybody.

I also found this brand new place, The Waypoint Lounge! I was sure it was a bar for geocachers. But alas, it is an event space with lots of amenities. Check the link. It is hard to make money off of geocachers. They really like free stuff.

Back home, a view down the road in my neighborhood.

I don’t have copyright

And I finished a jigsaw puzzle. I google lensed it and it is Hallstatt, Austria. Sure is pretty place is what I think.

NGC 6357/Pismis 24 (Chandra/Webb)
I don’t have copyright

And from our outer space. This is from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope augmented with data from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. It shows “Nebula NGC 6357 that contains Pismis 24, a young cluster of stars about 5,500 light-years from Earth.”

To me this is breathtaking.

So that’s a wrap for this week. I’m linking with Skywatch Friday

Skywatch Friday – Close to Home

The neighborhood adjoining us has a “swan pond” complete with a black swan that chases off all the other waterfowl.

This is from my front yard looking to the west at sunset one day.

A volunteer group that I am a member of had a meeting a local brewery just out of downtown. Leaving I took this photo looking west toward downtown Tulsa and the setting sun.

Home by the Lake by Frederic Church

This is a painting I found at our recent trip to the Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville, Arkansas. It is “Home by the Lake” by Frederic Church. It’s a great skywatch painting.

I am linking with Skywatch Friday.

Out of Town Hijinx

Recently we went on a little jaunt to Bentonville, Arkansas. Home of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and a very nice urban scene going on. Bentonville is also the headquarters of Walmart and the town is growing quickly. They have lots of restaurants and other places to entertain oneself.

Redbud Tree on the city’s trails

My partner in crime, Heather.

There are tons of walking paths all over town. We stayed close to the town center so we could just park our car and walk where we needed to go.

They not only have trails they have art integrated into nature with the trails.

Very nicely maintained and landscaped.

Lots of wildflowers.

We found a very nice Italian restaurant. Great food and wonderful service. The staff probably knew we were from Oklahoma when we pulled out phones to take photos of our deserts.

And here was mine. Two scoops of ice cream and one of raspberry sorbet. Wow, it was great.

And then we walked around for a bit looking for a place to have a drink. We found a place overlooking the square.

Another shot of Heather.

I had a gimlet, I think Heather had a glass of wine. It was wonderful to find a place for a drink and then walk to our airbnb a short distance away instead of parking.

The next day we got up, had breakfast and headed to the Crystal Bridges Museum. We viewed hundreds of works of art. All of them great. Here are a few that really caught my attention.

This work of art is Robe named “Eldest Daughter” by Addie Roanhorse. It was made in 2025 using traditional Osage Ribbon Cutting techniques.

The Good Shepherd

“The Good Shepherd” by Henry Ossawa Tanner in 1917. It caught my eye because we are close to Easter.

“Valley of the Catawissa in Autumn” by Thomas Moran, ca 1862. Talk about a great Skywatch Friday painting. I love Moran’s stuff.

The Song by William Merritt Chase

“The Song” by William Merritt Chase, in 1907. I’ve noticed this painting on several previous visit and it really struck me this time. I always thought it was a lady with a headache. But no, she’s listening to a piano played by another woman obscured by the column. Back then you didn’t have XM Radio or iTunes so if you wanted to listen to music, somebody had to play it for you. So the woman is listening hard to the music and is really into it.

So we had a good time. We got to spend a lot of time together and see some great art.

I don’t know when we are going home. Could be a while.

Linking with Skywatch Friday

Skywatch Friday – Geocaching in Tulsa

Last week one day I started with a hike with a friend of mine on the Mooser Creek Greenway. A three mile double loop where we heard a ton of birds and saw no other people.

I went home, got cleaned up, and headed out to Tulsa County’s Chandler Park in far northwest Tulsa for a meeting with an environmental non-profit that I volunteer for. After the meeting I checked my phone for nearby geocaches and sure enough there was one about 60 feet away. It actually was not where the cache was but there is some information on the sculpture one needs to determine the coordinates. Which I did.

There was another cache nearby where there are a lot of cliffs. I’ve looked for it off and on over the years because I don’t want to be climbing rocks or trees. But I decided to take a different tack on finding it and so I went down to the Lost City Trail.

The lost city trail winds in and out of the cliffs and is just plain beautiful. A scene or two in the movie “Flowers of the Killer Moon” were shot in areas of the trail.

There are steep cliffs and overhangs and all sorts of interesting stuff.

I find doing the shots over my shoulder seem to show the height of the cliffs better than straight on shots. Maybe its the sense of scale works better.

The clue for the cache is that it is in a hole. You know how many holes are in that cliff face? A bunch!! None of which I want to stick my hand into without knowing that is there. I took photos of various holes, none of which yielded anything. So I continue in not finding this cache.

I also tried my hand a few caches along Route 66 as it goes through Tulsa. One of which was associated with this sculpture.

And another one associated with this sculpture right across the street from the Eagle sculpture. Route 66 for some reason has all sorts of various

Tulsa's First Oil Well Historic Marker

And further east along US 66 there is another geocache associated with this plaque commemorating the first oil well drilled in Tulsa County. Tulsa used to be center of the oil industry in the United States and called themselves, “The Oil Capital of the World.”

So I had a pretty good time on a great day in some bright sunshine under clear skies.

I am linking with Skywatch Friday

Check the Geocaching.Com website to get information about it.

Skywatch Friday – Skies of Oklahoma

Here’s a sunset from the front yard.

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.

I am linking with Skywatch Friday

Oklahoma Spring Skies

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.

Linking with Skywatch Friday