Sunday night, Heather and I dressed up and attended our first wedding in a long time at a beautiful venue out in the country. Although we are both vaccinated I was a little nervous sitting shoulder to shoulder with people inside. First time we have done that in a while.
Last Year’s Flowers
The bride and groom had known each other in high school way back when and ended up together after going through some trials. The bride was radiant and the groom was smiling. I don’t know either one but it seems like this is meant to last.
More Last Year’s Flowers
It seems like we are seeing more and more of that. People have to grow up and get seasoned a little bit before they figure out what is going on.
Flowers from Woodward Park 2020
I wish them well. I hope I don’t get Covid!! Take care folks.
Earlier this month I visited the Heart of Route 66 Auto Museum in the Tulsa suburb of Sapulpa. You can’t miss it, it is right on Route 66 and has this gigantic gasoline pump outside.
Ironically the museum has connections for charging electric cars in their parking lot.
And then when you walk up to the entrance you pass these front ends of various cars on your way. Do you know what they are? I don’t, but I do know that there is a geocache nearby that I found a few months ago. The really good stuff though is inside the building.
They have a “Special Built” Maserati. Very swoopy. It is not very high. I imagine it can go really fast.
Pure function on the interior though. Not too much luxury but have you seen so many drink cup holders? (I am not sure that is what they are.)
Then a little 1958 BMW Isletta. I think it is kind of cute.
Here’s a 1967 Amphicar, made to travel on the road and in the water. Made in Germany not many were made. I remember the 60’s when I was in grade school. We were lied to, by now all cars should be amphicars and not and fly as well. What happened to the future of the Jetsons.
Here’s the propellers underneath the car. I watched a couple of videos about the car. One of them said that the problem is that the Amphicar combined the worst properties of a car with the worst properties of a boat.
I don’t see anybody wearing a lifejacket. I don’t think it would do very well in any sort of waves.
Here is a 1958 Messerschmitt. I don’t know what the model is. The guy at the museum said that Messerschmitt was forbidden to build aircraft for a while after WWII so to keep things going, they built cars.
A 1947 MG. There is nothing like British Sports Cars in my opinion. Yes they were not very reliable and expensive to operate and maintain but they are beautiful.
This car is owned by a friend of mine and is on loan to the museum (as most of the cars seem to be.) It is a 1955 Jaguar XK 140-MC. Talk about smooth beautiful lines this is it. I always loved Jaguars. Not the modern ones though. They are now expensive Fords in my opinion.
And they have lots of other cars and car memorabilia. Check their web site for more info. I think they are open Tuesday through Sunday. Cheap to get in, $6.50.
Rock Creek Bridge is a single lane steel truss type structure located on an original section of Route 66 in the Tulsa suburb of Sapulpa. It was built in 1924 when the road was called the Osage Trail. It is not in bad shape for being almost a hundred years old even though it is now rated for no more than four tons. The modern Route 66 is off to the south a couple hundred feet or so more and has a more modern concrete bridge.
This bridge was part of ten Route 66 locations featured in a new type of Geocaching called Adventure Labs. They don’t require you to find actual containers or other physical objects. It’s a lot of fun if you don’t feel like disturbing snakes, getting spider bit, or explaining yourself to the local authorities. Read the link to find out more.
April 22 last week was the 132nd anniversary of the 1889 Land Run in Oklahoma when a guestimated 50,000 settlers seeking free land rushed into the area in central Oklahoma from all directions. It was a mess.
You ever hear of the Oklahoma Sooners? Those were the people who sneaked into the territory ahead of time. Anyway, one had to find a plat of land and then run to the nearest land office and file your claim.
This monument is in Oklahoma City. I photographed several years ago and lately re-edited the photos. I understand that the monument has been added to.
I’m vaccinated and the numbers in Oklahoma are down right now so I ventured to Tulsa’s Expo Square for the Tulsa Auto Show. It’s the first exhibition I have been to since this pandemic began.
They had lots of snazzy cars there. Here is the new Ford Bronco II. It looks great. It’s list price is $91,000 plus or minus or roughly three and half times what my car cost. So my question why anybody who can afford this would sleep in a tent on the roof? Maybe that’s you can afford after buying it?
I was intrigued by the high performance electric cars they had on display. They were all pushed to the side for some reason. I suspect that we are going to be seeing more and more high performance electric cars. Above is a Ford Mustang, the Ford Mustang Mach-E.
Jeep had a pre-production model of their Rubicon. Not for sale now but soon!!!
Here’s is a Rubicon with a Hemi Engine in it. Probably about the same cost as the Ford Bronco II.
They had some classic cars as well. I love this thing. I don’t want to own it, I just want to look at it.
And this gangster car.
My favorite was the General Motors Futurliner. GM had a caravan of ten of these that starting in the 30’s would go from town to town and set up shows of how wonderful the future was going to be. They quit doing it in the mid 50’s because people could see what the future was going to be by watching their televisions.
So the Futurliners were sold. Oral Roberts bought one to use as a traveling church in South America.
I love them.
So anyway, that’s the report from the Tulsa Auto Show. My only parting comment is that they promised they would enforce masking and spacing but they didn’t. You might want to keep that in mind if you want to see any other events at Expo Square. I wore my mask and kept my distance.
Off we went to the work site. We had to pack all the tools about a mile to the new trail. Kudos to the guys who pushed the wheel barrows.
The YMCA has shut down to totally renovate their facility and are opening up this summer. It’s going to be great and one of the things they wanted was more defined and easier to hike trails to connect their property with the rest of Turkey Mountain. The existing trails are badly eroded and unmarked and many of their day campers who go off hiking get lost.
We broke up into three groups or so. Somebody had taken a gas powered blower and blew the leaves off the proposed trail route, earlier the route had been flagged. The people who made the route did a good job. There was very little confusion about what we were supposed to be doing.
So the Riverparks staff and a few of the officers from the Wilderness Coalition mapped out a new trail that should make everybody happy. Y daycampers, and the many hikers and mountain bikers that use the trail. It features some switchbacks which should reduce erosion problems.
No trees were sacrificed for the new trail! Some saplings and brush got removed.
Everybody grabbed shovels, picks, saws, loppers and got to work and we got the new trail pretty much done in a few hours. People started using the new trail while we were in the middle of building it.
A mystery. We found this whole with a dryer duct snaking out and a ladder going down. Apparently pretty deep. An old meth lab? Maybe, moonshiners used to be active on the mountain back in the day.
It’ll take some finishing touches but they started putting up my trail markers right away.
Blocking off the old trail using the materials at hand.
And we spent some time closing off the old badly eroded trail with fallen branches. It needs to heal.
We celebrated our work with a few adult beverages in the parking lot afterward. Everybody was very proud of the work done. It was a great way to spend a Saturday morning.
So this is me working on the trail. I stole the photo from the Urban Wilderness Coalition’s facebook page. Hopefully I won’t go to jail.
And up pops a map on a facebook page showing the old and closed routes. I am stealing this map also. I am leading quite the life of crime lately. Anyway you can see the new route is longer, not near as steep, and with switchbacks. Hopefully erosion will be more easily controlled on the new route.
I spent a couple hours on a beautiful Saturday morning working with the Tulsa Area Geocachers in their project to clean up Centennial Park, close to downtown.
With assistance from the Tulsa Parks Department we picked up trash, trimmed shrubbery and pulled up dead plants from the planting beds.
I spent most of my time with a rake pulling up crap out of the pond. Beer cans, foam drinking cups and food containers, wine boxes, all sorts of stuff. I worked around this turtle for quite a while and he only got in the water when I left.
This chattery guy was barking and shaking his tail at me. If I wasn’t going to feed him then I just needed to move on I think.
I pulled a lot of stuff out of the shrubs as well. Despite the many trash cans it looks like some office workers bring their lunches, eat and then just leave the trash. I used to work with people like that. They would walk off with a trash can just thirty feet away and say “Oh, they have people who do that.” Not how I was raised is what I have to say.
And here is one of the best kept secrets in Tulsa. Not one person I have talked to about this has ever heard about it. A Centennial Time Capsule.
There is a car in the time capsule. It is not going to opened until 2048. If I am still around I’ll be too old attend. I got an alternate plan though, are you in? It’s right by a street. What say we hire a contractor to go open up. We’ll make it look all official, open it up, pull the car out, put it on a truck and drive off and have the contractor put everything back together. We’ll do it in the middle of the day. Nobody will care. Lets do it!!
And here is another mystery about people. You’ve seen these things right. Bags for picking up doggy doo. Well guess what, lots of people use the bags and throw them to the side of the walk, or worse, there were lots of them in the pond!! Will garbage cans literally no further than a hundred feet anywhere in the park! What up folks!
A good time was had by all. I got to meet many geocachers and say hello to others I already knew.
The event was an official geocache and with almost all geocaches you have to sign the log to be counted. This one was a cake that you could sign. Sorry, in these pandemic times, and after picking up all the stuff I did for two hours, and no place to properly clean my hands, nope, didn’t sign the log and didn’t have a piece of cake either.
We hauled out a mountain of stuff though. All for a good cause.
I went on a walk around Tulsa’s Lafortune Park today this cool, windy, overcast day. And found some graffiti. I don’t anybody minds this kind of graffiti.
It looks like somebody’s little brother or sister did some of their own.
Found some reflections in a pond.
Somebody is missing a shoe? Is it one of the Legends?
I love all the apps that link to my running watch. Sorry.
And just before my walk I was at a shopping center admiring the blooms and finding a geocache.
Earlier I was checking out the daffodils at Woodward Park. They are up and very pretty. They need sun to bring out the full brilliance though.
Even earlier than that, Lizzie the kitten was making friends with the Easter Bunny.
Yesterday I hauled Logan back to his college. We’ll see him in a couple weeks.
I hope everybody is doing well this week!! I’m linking with Our World Tuesday.
It was a wet soggy day here in eastern Oklahoma on Sunday. I felt the need to go take some photos so I loaded up my camera and drone and in search of photos to take. I found these trees blooming at the Tulsa’s Woodward Park. I love the blooms, don’t tell me what they are because I was too lazy to wander over and look at the labels under each tree.
Next I got a few minutes of non-rain at the RiverParks. It was wet and soggy and the Arkansas River was up quite a bit.
Got this glimpse of a guy doing what I should have been doing, running on trails. Maybe next time.
Instead, here is me standing on the trail, in the rain. If I’d of waited a couple of hours, the sun would have been out. Kind of reminds of an old joke but I’ll spare you.
