Every morning I drive by this greenbelt. At Spring and Fall the sun rises just perfectly.
My “cousin-in-law” Cheri Lu took this photo at her family’s ranch in Western Oklahoma. I love the big skies out there. Even with power lines.
Another scene from the bike ride Heather and I took last weekend. Autumn is Oklahoma’s best season as far as I am concerned. It is really long period of warm days and cool nights. It is time for backyard fires and camping.
On Sunday Heather and I went for a bike ride. We drove 14 miles in nice weather under a beautiful blue sky.
And because I’m such a nerd, here is a video of the route we took.
Saturday night we celebrated our Anniversary in style at a trendy restaurant downtown. The Bull in the Alley, only ten tables in the place. But it is deluxe.
We had lots of real estate to ourselves. We had a nice leisurely dinner. We’ll be going back.
The entrance is in an alley. Who’d of thought. No sign or anything.
We also have a new member of the family. A nice little female kitten. She has taken over the house. We are trying to name her. The vet we got her from calls her Wendy. We think Windy might be more apt because she is kind of gassy. We are thinking Izzy or Lizzy or Chloe sounds good. What do you think? She is very sweet and not scared of our goofy dogs at all.
Nana kind likes her also.
Heather is already hooked, and so am I.
Anway, that is what is up with us. I did post a bit of the sky so this is my Skywatch Friday post.
I mentioned in my previous post that my father passed away in Idaho recently. That was sad but our small family gathered and we got to see our newest member from Arizona. What a sweetheart she is and so active. Getting friends and family together is a positive part of funerals so we gathered from the various corners of our country including brother Bob, a civilian employee for the Navy who was evacuated from his home in Corpus Christi because of Hurricane Harvey. He thinks his apartment is okay but will not be sure until he gets home.
My heart goes out to the Texans who are flooded because of the storm. I used to live in the Houston area.
Anyways from the scene above I could take photos of the Idaho sunsets over the back fence.
I also got some great sky shots while passing through the Denver Airport. I’m headed home this afternoon and will pass through Denver again.
One of my trips up here, I had to drive back to Salt Lake City to catch a flight home because of the Eclipse madness. I took the opportunity to find my first Utah cache. I’ve now got all the states in the west except for Nevada.
I had to turn around and fly right back to Idaho from Tulsa and I got to see a sunrise on the way back.
We had storms in Tulsa on Tuesday. I hate the storms but love the rain and all it brings us. As long as it is not too much. I’m choosy about my blessings.
I went out to western Oklahoma for a meeting on Monday. I love the big skies and the big hearted, hard working people out there. If you look close you can tell I work for a pipeline company based on all the stuff in the foreground.
This is evening on the Snake River in Idaho Falls from our trip out there a couple weeks ago. We went to check on my father. He is not doing very well and your prayers on his behalf would be appreciated. My sister is there with him right now. I think I’ll be going back soon.
This is downtown Tulsa. Thursday Heather came down and we had lunch and then we had ice cream at a fancy new shopping center downtown built out of storage containers. It is called the BoxYard. It is all so fancy and new. They let me in though so it can’t be that fancy.
This is the view out of our office window Thursday morning. We had a fraction of an inch of moisture an it was welcome. We haven’t had too much rain lately.
I went running on Tulsa’s Turkey Mountain Urban Wilderness on Wednesday night. I love it on Turkey Mountain.
This is another view out the office window on a sunny day. This effect is generated by a “Tiny Planet” App on my cell phone. There are lots of them. I love a good cheap app.
This is our neighborhood last week.Sorry about the grainy photo but I loved the color.
One of my favorite things to do is watch baseball games. I don’t give a flip about them on television but I love watching live baseball, everything from little kids playing tball on up to the major leagues. I love it all. Here in Tulsa we have a AA Professional Baseball Team, The Drillers, in honor of Tulsa’s legacy as “Oil Capital of the World.” AA is two levels below the major leagues but the players and the games are still excellent. A lot of the guys we see playing will be in the major leagues in a few years. The Drillers play in a beautiful downtown ballpark, ONEOK Field and the way it is situated, one can see some great skies.
A shot from our trip to Orange Beach, Alabama earlier this summer for vacation. I love hanging out at the beach. What you see changes every second.
A full moon from earlier this week. I’m told it was the Thunder Moon or the Buck Moon. I captured not too long after moonrise so it had some color to it.
Earli
From our trip to Bentonville, Arkansas recently. They have a charming town square. I noticed this confederate monument in the middle of the park. As far as I know there is nobody clamoring to have it removed. It is interesting to me that Oklahoma and Arkansas are right next to each other and you won’t see sights like this in Oklahoma. Arkansas was a state long before Oklahoma is the reason I am guessing. Just as an aside, Stand Waite was a Cherokee from what was then “Indian Territory” who rose to the rank of Brigadier General in the Confederate Army and was quite successful fighting Union troops and was responsible for keeping them out of Oklahoma and east Texas during the Civil War. He was the last confederate general to surrender which he did in Doaksville, in what is now Oklahoma on June 29, 1865. I stumbled across the ghost town of Doaksville years ago and wrote this blog post about it.
Well, I got off on a tangent. Sorry about that.
It is incredible how they time the fireworks. Here is a double stack.
Of course this being an American blog, you can expect some fireworks as we celebrated the Declaration of Independence on July 4.
Triple Stack
A couple of my Brit friends posted “Happy Treason Day, You Ungrateful Colonists” on facebook. All in good fun of course. At least I think it was all in good fun.
Quadruple Stack!!!
Enough of fireworks!!! How about a stainless steel tree!!
Enough of fireworks and politics okay. How about a stainless steel tree? It is a sculpture called “Yield” by the artist Roxy Paine installed at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas.
I got a new weather station to replace my old one which finally succumbed to our Oklahoma weather after years of service. The old one was like a mini space station with solar cells for recharging batteries and all sorts of other things. My new one is pretty much self contained and uses rechargeable lithium batteries. The old one just transmitted to a panel in the house. The new one has no panel. It transmits directly to a hub that ties directly into our wifi router and is thus full time on the web. I have it on the Weather Underground here. Below is a screenshot of the output. And I have a widget off to the right.
Gadgets are great but gadgets that are interconnected are just nirvana in my book. My running watch that synchs my phone and Al Gore’s interwebs while I run is another version of nirvana. What did we do before internet synched GPS watches? Of course when things don’t link and synch and I am up to my elbows in MAC and IOP addresses it gets a little frustrating. Nothing that a few beers and some judicious cussing and and google searching and good old fashioned guessing at the settings couldn’t fix.
How about you? Are you all linked and synched or off the grid. You are not too far off the grid if you are reading this.
Even the rainy overcast days at the beach are interesting with the big vistas. This particular day featured fast moving showers moving through the area. I suscribe to the “hear it, fear it, see it, flee it” school of lightning. So I am not going to venture out during a rainstorm but I’ll sure take photos of those that do.
I am fascinated how the water changes color with the sky. Sometimes the water is blue, other times green, and still others grey. We stayed at the beach for a week and had no reason to turn on the television even when it was rained.