Category Archives: Our World

Turkey Mountain in the Rain – Our World

Saturday I went to Tulsa’s popular Turkey Mountain park and did a little hiking. It is never very crowded once you get a quarter mile from the parking lot but what few people there were seemed to vanish when it started raining. The temperature was in the sixties and I didn’t care about getting wet. I did care about lightning so I took the above shot and got away from those powerlines.

The park has a surprising number of ponds (for some reason ponds are lakes on the mountain). Last summer they dried up. It is nice to see water in them.

I spent about two hours and found three of the seven new geocaches in the park and then left. Two hours well spent in my book.

Our World Tuesday

Our World – Cold, Wet, Rainy and Skunked – More Geocaching at Tulsa’s Mohawk Park

(Selfie at the end of my geocaching jaunt)

Saturday it was about 36F and rainy. I had some time after dropping the kid off at his Improv class so I went back to Mohawk Park to do some more geocaching. The forecast was cold and rainy but I thought they were just kidding about the wet part. They weren’t kidding. The joke was on me but I didn’t mind. I got to for a long walk in the woods and that was the whole point. I was warm enough even though I was wearing too much cotton. I have all sorts of high tech clothing to keep me dry and warm in the rain. I don’t wear any of it when going into the woods. The thorns tear that expensive stuff right up. Let them tear up old cheap cotton is what I say.

I met Pepe LePew. He didn’t stop to chat and that was okay with me. He looked injured to me. You don’t generally see these critters moving out in open country in the middle of the day.

A creek was up. I love the sight of rain drops hitting water. Reminds me of when I was just a little kid in central Utah fishing for trout in the rivers and streams. It seemed like the trout were easier to catch under such conditions. Plus the rain seems to amplify the solitude and dampen out outside noise there was. I’m all about the solitude when I’m in the woods.

I found the cache I was looking for. The one at the farthest reach of the park. I’m wanting to find caches like these before the weather warms up too much bringing with it ticks, chiggers, poison ivy, and snakes. Late Fall and Winter is really the golden time for woods geocaching. The reduced leaf cover makes for better Global Positioning System Receiver (“GPSR”) readings necessary to find the caches.

If the weather had been better I had enough time to find a few more caches but I was getting cold and I’ll be back another day. There are over two million geocaches in the world. I don’t have to find them all. That reminds of a joke but since I’m really trying to keep this humble blog G rated I’ll pass on telling it for now. Just take it from me, it is a good joke.

Geocaching 101

Our World Tuesday

Our World – Geocaching at Tulsa’s Mohawk Park

(Only geocachers were out in the park on Saturday. And other people who have no sense.)

With all that we have had going on this winter plus the cold miserable weather I haven’t been geocaching in months. Today after dropping Logan off at his improv comedy class I had a couple hours to myself so I went to Mohawk Park to find a few caches.

(Old lighted parking lot fallen into disuse. I don’t know why people would park there, especially at night.)

You see I like to find the bigger caches out in the woods. I like the sense of aloneness and it gives me a chance to get my head back on straight. My hair may be all messed up but I like my head on straight.

(Believe it or not I followed a faint trail through the woods.)

Mohawk Park is immense. At 2800 acres it is one of the biggest city parks in the country. Some of it is pretty developed. The Tulsa Zoo is there along with picnic grounds and playgrounds along with a police shooting range. There is plenty of woods left to hide geocaches.

(For some reason coming upon these little buildings creeps me out.)

In my travels I found a long forgotten barn out in the middle of nowhere.

It wasn’t too forgotten. Somebody was storing hay there. For what, I don’t know. There were no livestock nearby.)

(Are you kidding me? It is not even that good. Maybe they were practicing, or they were ashamed of themselves.)
And some taggers had found it.

(Something else that creeps me out, getting followed at long distance.)

A guy was walking his dog along an abandoned road.

(Thank you to my fellow taxpayers for spending billions of dollars putting the GPS satellites in space so I can find trinkets in the woods! I salute you.)

I found four caches while I was out there. My fancy schmancy fitbit tells me that I walked about 6000 steps doing that or about three miles. That includes the walking around in circles muttering to myself while looking for these things.

(I bet you were completely fooled)

This is what geocachers call “parallel stick camo.”

Somebody else found this structure. What it is doing out here besides being a cache hiding spot? I have no idea.

I saw this cache from across a creek. It has been out here eleven years. It takes a lot of work to keep a cache going that long. People accidentally find them and take them or vandalize them. Water gets inside them and spoils the paper log.

Time was up and I headed back into town to pick up the kid.

Have you ever been geocaching? Or do you have a life?

Geocaching 101

What is Geocaching

Our World Tuesday

Our World – The Prayer Tower at Oral Roberts University

The Prayer Tower at Oral Roberts University is a 200 foot tall tower in the middle of the campus. It was built in 1965 and was designed by Frank Wallace. It is said to be a “Googie” influenced design. Googie is new term to me and it refers to futuristic or “space age” designs. I get in trouble with architectual terms and styles so those of you that know more about this please share and we’ll all learn something.

I think that the tower is beautiful and graceful and fits it’s space just right. Check the ORU link for information about the symbolism of the building. The distinctive shape is stylized 360 degree cross.

It was kind of difficult but I got a Selfie off the bottom of the observation deck. Yep that’s me.

Another view in a greener time of year.

Our World

Our World – Keystone Ancient Forest

New Year’s Day here in Oklahoma was very nice and mild. Neither son nor I give a flip about college football (I’m an NFL fan) or watching parades on television so we went to see the Keystone Ancient Forest about a half hour away.

The Forest is a preserve owned by the City of Sand Springs and operated by an army of friendly and informative volunteers.

The preserve is over 1300 acres and conserves one of the few remaining original crosstimbers forests in Oklahoma. Many of the post oaks are over 300 years old and some of the cedars are over 500 years old. Originally the crosstimbers covered 30,000 square miles in a swath from north Texas, through Oklahoma, and into southern Kansas. Much of it is gone, cleared for farms and ranches and other development. The land of the preserve is very rough and rocky so the area was left alone.

The crosstimbers were a major barrier to settlement in the area. Washington Irving during his tour of the area in the 1832’s wrote that they were “struggling through forests of cast iron.” From what I read the Keystone Ancient Forest is the very first preserve of the crosstimbers.

The trees and landscape isn’t really spectacular, the trees are old and very tough. They have survived drought and fire and had to put down roots in hardscrabble rocky soil.

The preserve is only open two weekends a month now and their schedule expands to every weekend in March. They open at 8 and close at 2. Of course I would like to see it open more but of course that takes money and volunteer time.

They have three trails so far. One of them is an ADA compliant paved trail about 0.8 miles long. The main trail, the Frank Trail, takes off from the paved trail and is 2.8 miles out and back. It is a wide dirt track in excellent shape that takes you a great overlook of Lake Keystone below.

They have a brand new trail, I think it is the Wilson Trail. It is about a mile but is reportedly very challenging. Son and I started down it but it got a little backed up with groups of kids fooling around so we decided to save it for another day.

(I keep forgetting to stick my chin out so that I can at least count my double chins)

We had a good time. What a way to spend New Year’s Day.

What did you do for New Year’s Day?

Our World Tuesday

Further Links for the Keystone Ancient Forest Preserve

City of Sand Springs including a link to the Schedule

The Nature Conservancy, information about the Preserve.

A TravelOK article about the site. (TravelOK is by the State of Oklahoma)

A Youtube Video about the Preserve by Oklahoma Gardening

Our World – Geocaching on Turkey Mountain

I have geocache named Rock City hidden deep on Turkey Mountain. The last person who looked for it reported that they couldn’t find it although they looked twice. I knew that somebody had probably “muggled” it. Geocacher lingo for stealing or vandalizing a cache.

So I made me another cache out of a Bismati rice jar and some camo duct tape.

Son and I packed it up and headed up to Turkey Mountain. You can see the finished cache container sitting on the sign to the left.

A mountain unicycler came on by. Ultra cool. I have seen unicyclers on the mountain before but they had poles. This guy just had pure balance.

We passed this thing. I told Logan that it is the skeleton of a the TurkeyMountasaurous dinosaur. He quit believing in his Dad’s stories a long time ago. Shows you how smart he is. Compared to me at least.

This is Rock City. It is quite the meeting place. Stay here long enough you will see runners, hikers, bicyclists, geoachers, and micro car enthusiasts all converge here. One of whom stole my cache. I hope they quit. Anyway I replaced it. Here is the story of when we planted the cache two years ago. I put recyclable cameras in the caches I plant nowadays and ask finders to take pictures of themselves. Here are some pictures of people who have found the cache.

Then for grins and giggles we went over to another cache to Tom’s Turkey Mountain Homestead to look for it, again. I have been here at least a half dozen times the last year looking for it. I spent about a half hour rooting around looking for it. It is a micro so it is very small. I didn’t find it this time either.

As we left I noticed that a nearby tree was laughing at me. I don’t blame him. Next time I might bring my axe and see how he laughs then. (Just kidding folks!)

On the way out we passed Pepsi lake. Oddly enough it has a bunch of old Pepsi truck bodies sitting on the dam. I have no idea why. It is also the site of another evil little microcache, What are These Doing Here. I found it finally last year kind of by accident.

We finished our little adventure tired and a little muddy but we had a great walk in the woods.

When was the last time you had a nice walk in the woods?

Our World Tuesday

Philbrook Museum of Art’s 2013 Festival of the Trees

(I have decided that I like trees with bosoms. What about you? The tree at lower right was made out of recycled materials. I don’t know about you but we recycle our tree ever year. Yep, we pull it out of the attic and put it back ever year.)

Saturday afternoon Heather, Logan, and friend Patty took the world’s greatest Mother in Law, Nana to Tulsa’s Philbrook Museum of Art for some lunch and to see the Philbrook’s Festival of the Trees.

(These are nice but I don’t thing the kid is buying these kind of trees. Plus where would I hang my Dallas Cowboys ornament. I have a hard enough time sneaking it on the tree every year. Heather has no problem making sure that it goes on the interior side of the tree facing the wall.)

The Festival of the Trees is something I look forward to every year. The trees are all very creative.

(These are unbreakable trees. You could use them for Christmas trees during the season and for traffic barricades off season.)

I don’t think that I would really want one of these in the living room but they are fun to look at.

(You may have figured out that I’m a new subscriber to picmonkey dot com and by gum I’m going to get my money’s worth. Yep, so expect a torrent of collages and treatments. I’m not a huge fan of so called SOC. so leave me alone.)

One tree was a cowboy tree. It didn’t photograph to well as a whole but I loved the wire and rope ornaments.

(I just wish I could eat some of this stuff. I’m a big fan of gingerbread. I’m afraid that they might be a little stale and taste like Elmers.)

The gingerbread houses are also a favorite of mine.

(Ah, some favorites here. The top left was done by some kids in a class at Logan’s school. Top right is of Holy Family Cathedral where I was forbidden by a member to take photographs of the church. And that is why I’m going to hell when I die. I’m going to have lots of company though. Bottom right, Girl Scout Cookies!!!!!, bottom right is actually the gardens at Philbrook museum. Cool.)

It doesn’t take too long to go through both the trees and gingerbread houses.

One of the gingerbread exhibits getting lots of oohs and ahs with this scene of Tulsa. You get a whole tour of the city with this. From upper left clockwise to lower right you have the Golden Driller, the Blue Dome, the Mayo Hotel, and the BOK center. The Christmas tree and ice rink are the Winter Festival. This was nice but…

This was my favorite. Santa needs to go on a diet and so does Yogi.

Nana however is looking great!! Happy Birthday Nana!!

Our World Tuesday

Our World Tuesday – Travel Bugs

(Eastcountymagazine.org)

Those that follow me at all know that I’m a geocacher. (Geocaching 101 here). Geocaching is where some people hide caches out and about and post the coordinates on geocaching dot come and other people download those coordinates and go find the caches. There are over two million geocaches in the world now. An affiliated activity of geocaching is travel bugs. Travel bugs are tagged items, with individual tracking codes, that travel from geocache to geocache or person to person. Every time they are moved the person who does the moving logs the movement on geocaching dot com. Plus other people log a “Discover” a travelbug without actually taking it. On November 6, an American Astronaut, Rick Mastraccio, took a travel bug to the International Spache Station. (There has been a geocache on the International Space Station since 2008.)

Some travelbugs are actually coins similar to the one above. The tags and coins are called “trackables” and lots of geocachers paricipate. I don’t too much. I’ve lost too many of other people’s trackables and some people keep the trackables without sending them on. I’ve had one geocoin do pretty well though. I launched a geocoin that I named “Memories of Other Places” in August 2005 here in Tulsa.

It knocked around Oklahoma and Texas for a time and then went to Washington State and the West Coast.

And then somebody took it to Germany where it spent years with one side trip to Greece and France. It is now in the Netherlands. I’d love for it to come back to the States some time but Europeans are taking very good care of it.

All told it has travelled 16,639.7 miles and has been moved between caches or between people, or “discovered” 367 times. I think that is pretty remarkable. Many trackables disappear long before then.

I have been wanting to launch another travel bug but have been discouraged because of the high disppearance rate but I saw a product on Amazon that I just had have. It is a large travel bug tag that is magnetized so that it can be attached to a large metallic object.

So I bought one and attached it to my car, a Kia Soul. I named the travel bug “All is Well With My Soul” after my second favorite Baptist Hymn. (My most favorite is Softly and Tenderly by the way.) I was pretty excited about this. Heather is a lot more reserved in her excitement. On facebook where I first announced my new travel bug she wrote, “Eyes rolling and sighing……” I know that she will come around. At least I hope that she does before she finds out that I am preparing to turn her car into a trackable also. If she doesn’t come around I might have to ask if any of my fellow bloggers out there have an extra couch that I could borrow for a a brief time.

So Saturday I went geocaching in midtown Tulsa and at an isolated lake southeast of Tulsa. I found six total. I am not looking for any geocachers to steal my car to log the cache I’m hoping that a few geocachers spot the tag on my car and log it as a discover. We’ll just have to see what happens. So far I’ve only logged 20.5 miles on my new trackable.

What is the point of turning my car into a trackable? I don’t know its that I like connections. Who knows who’ll log it and where they are from and what they are doing.

Our World Tuesday

Astronaut Taking Treasure-Hunt ‘Travel Bug’ to Space Station

Our World – Arabian and Half Arabian Championship Horse Show 2013

A couple weeks ago the Arabian Horse Association held their Arabian and Half Arabian Championship here in Tulsa. As a bonus my sister Ellen and her daughter, niece Jillian came from Colorado to see the Championship and visit with us.

Of course you have to fly the flag before you do anything right and play the Star Spangled Banner.

And in a nice gesture the Canadian flag was paraded and their national anthem played.

Then the big guy in the red jacket sounded the bugle and we were off.

I don’t know a thing about Arabian horses but I can tell you now that they are beautiful and have lots of attitude.

They are well trained and so are the riders. It was fun to watch as the judges put them through the various paces.

I stole this picture while the horse and trainer were posing for a real photographer.

Another segment of the Championship was the horses posing. Don’t worry, I did not see any horses hit with the whip, or whatever it is. It seemed to be used to get the horse to pose correctly. The horses had lots of attitude. Kind of like teenagers when posing for family pics. You know what I mean.

The horses had a classic looking trot. The riders were almost perfectly still. It was rather elegant to watch.

There were all sorts of events and all sorts of championships. This lady was the Reserve Champion. Which I think is second place in her event. She wowed the crowd with her standing on the horse. Not as part of the competition of course but part of her celebration afterward.

The winner got a big check. Makes winning that much better right.

I like the behind the scenes in the staging area. All sorts of stuff going on.

The stable areas were luxurious. This is part of the stable area. It looks like a nice living room to me. Lots of money at these shows.

And they display their trophys.

And the expo, everybody has an expo these days. I bet you that they have expos at spelling bees. These saddles are beautiful.

Decorative clothing.

And cowboy boots. Why have boots if you nobody can see them is what I say.

Jillian brought a 4H team from Colorado who participated in the horse judging events. You can see that the students did very well. Jillian is at far right.

One of the more spectacular events involved the riders and horses wearing costumes.

I loved it. It was like Lawrence of Arabia. You know except for the violence and all that.

Again, the riders were elegant and the horses were beautiful, and full attitude. I think I might become a fan of Arabian horses.

If you want to see a post by somebody that knew what was going on check out my Sister’s post on the event. She knows about horses. So does Jillian. Me, I can tell a horse from a cow at least 80% of the time.

Our World Tuesday

The Powell Gardens of Kansas City

For the final day of our Fall Break Road Trip to Kansas City we ventured about 30 miles east of Kansas City to visit Powell Gardens. It was beautiful and I expected that but what I didn’t expect was the sense of humor. I love a sense of humor.

For example, have you ever really seen a Flower Bed? Not till now I expect.

Or how about some Fall Fun?

Or a Scarey Crow? I don’t really get along with people who don’t have a sense of humor. Or people who don’t like dogs or critters in general, or who don’t like art or flowers, or who don’t believe in something bigger than themselves! Just saying. I’m quite the bigot aren’t I. I don’t feel bad about it.