Category Archives: Our World Tuesday

Our World – Tulsa’s Gathering Place

I went for a walk last week at Tulsa’s Gathering Place. A huge public, privately funded, free park built right next to the Arkansas River. I’ve been there a bunch of times and I am still trying to get my head around it.

It has a bunch of different facets to it. One of the things I like is the beauty of the place. From the native, sustainable plantings the landscaping. It’s a great place to hang out. No cars are allowed in the place, the parking is all in the periphery. So be prepared for walk. They do have handicapped parking closer in though.

Who says Tulsa doesn’t have a beach?

I love the Koi Pond. The park is a mixture of high energy and serene.

The native plants make for low maintenance and low water use. It also makes for critters that live in the planting areas and other critters who feed on the critters, like snakes.

There are all sorts of areas to sit and visit, while maintaining social distancing.

The main draw are spectacular play structures. They are huge. Designed and built in Europe, they are unlike anything I have ever seen.

Other times, like on winter mornings I have climbed and clambered and used the slides. I’m not really into that when kids are present though. It’s for them.

The structures are complex and interconnected and there are multiple ways to play on them.

And great exercise to, sliding down the tubes is fun, but you have to climb up to them.

I loved their boat with the sail.

They had their water/hydraulics feature working. It had never been working on my previous trips. You have hand operated pumps, valves, dams. You can make the water go this and that. Talk about fun!!

And then off by itself is the sensory garden with all sorts of things to look at, touch, feel and make noise with.

So you can go from the busy and noisy to isolated and quiet easily.

And make your own music!!

One of my favorite places is the Lodge. It looks like an expensive resort.

I love the woodwork and the midcentury modern vibe with the furniture. Masks required!!

They have a great big fireplace that is just the place on cold winter days. And wifi and a snack bar.

So, this is just a sampler. They also have a boat house where you can rent canoes and kayaks. Bicycle and skateboard parks, and lots of sports courts, cafe’s. Play areas for smaller children, lots of rest rooms. And guess what, no admissions fees, no parking fees, no nothing. They are open 9 am to 8 pm seven days a week. Check out their web site for more information. The home page has some great drone video footage of the park.

I am linking with Our World Tuesday – Come join in!!

Our World – Oklahoma Countryside

Sunday morning, before anybody got up, I ventured out to do some geocaching out of Town. I went through the city of Mounds and stopped to take a photo of this building which looks to be unoccupied at the moment.

What got my attention though was this mural on the side of the building. I checked out the web site and it looks to be not very active right now. It was state sponsored organization and I imagine that funds got cut. But the mural survives and I love the handprints.

At a nearby cemetery I found this little angel. I like hanging out in graveyards. I get a sense of peace there.

I found this really old marker. Eliza A.N. What’s up with just initials for a last name. 1822-1907 – A lot happened in the world during that time. A mystery!! I tried googling a little bit but couldn’t find anything.

Here we had three crosses put up on fenceposts. Some sort of trinity type thing. I think this is fairly recent.

Close by a long forgotten hibiscus is growing up among poison ivy.

Anyway, that was my little outing. I’m linking with Our World Tuesday.

Our World – Pandemic Weekend

I did a little bit of exploring while looking for geocaches Sunday. I found a new nature trail I didn’t know about in the Tulsa suburb of Jenks.

It even has a bench. I just love benches on trails. Downtown Tulsa used to have benches on the sidewalks but the homeless population grew so much that they took over the benches all day long so all the benches were removed. I don’t know blame the homeless people. Many of the services for homeless are downtown and they got to sit somewhere right? With the benches gone, they sprawled on the grass at churches and other buildings. Anyway, I digress.

So I found a cache on the trail. About 40 feet from where it was supposed to be.

Elsewhere I found this gadget caches. Gadget caches are the big thing in geocaching right now. The caches are easy to find but hard to open. This one had various screws and such on both sides of the box so you were supposed to use your fingers on each side to use your body to complete an electrical circuit and you look through the hole and you are supposed to be able to see what the combination to the lock is. Well I completed the circuit but I couldn’t figure out the combination.

I went bicycling on Friday. I pretty much stick to the RiverParks trails because their are no highway crossings and I can make a good 13 mile to 15 mile loop out of the trails. That’s nothing to a good rider. I am not a good rider but I love riding my bike. My bike is about 15 years old so by now.

This was Sunday morning at our house, actually most mornings. We get them up, outside, fed and then they sleep. After sleeping all night long!!

I’m reading John Bolton’s latest book on his time at the Trump Administration. I saw a few of his interviews and I was shocked that he actually had a great sense of humor and could laugh and smile. The only thing I ever remember him doing was threatening hellfire and war on countries he wasn’t happy with. He is still that way but I am seeing that he has consistent set of principles that he acts from so I have a new respect for him. His book has lots of quips also. He has an excellent sense of dry humor.

We are looking at freshening up our house of twenty years. We brought it brand new and we are going to get new flooring and make a bunch of other changes so we went to Tulsa’s Parade of Homes. We saw all sorts of stuff we liked in terms of flooring, windows, decor, etc. Also, everybody was masked up and there were not the crowds of previous years.

Afterwards we went to a produce stand. Dotson. One of the many things about summer I like are the vegetables.

So on my bagels nowdays, at the suggestion of a blog friend, I am using avocado and orange marmalade. I was a little leery but I love it. I bought some spicy mashed avocado and I love it. It’s also good insurance that nobody else in the house will eat it.

That’s all this week!! I’m linking with Our World Tuesday

Our World – Turkey Mountain (again)

So last Friday I ventured out for another run on Turkey Mountain. Sorry for being so repetitive but when the weather is hot I love heading to the shady dirt trails. This time I went on the east side, which some people call the back country. Not near as many people in the back country and easier to get lost.

It’s an Urban Wilderness so in addition to powerlines there are a couple of pipelines. This one is Enable Midstream Partner’s transmission line to PSO’s Tulsa Power Station. I used to work for Enable you see. I hope that I am not giving away any secrets. This is an old pipeline, not sure how old but pretty old. New pipelines have more modern technology where they would drill this little segment instead of putting it above ground.

Somebody used the pipe to mark the Pink Trail. Or maybe Enable is saying that gas can flow both ways.

Got up to a sign notifying that the trail ahead is closed because of renovations to the West Side YMCA. I had to go check it out.

Can’t go any further. They are really revamping the site. It’s going to be great. But anyway I head back.

And take the Snake Trail back to the parking lot.

I didn’t go very far but I went far enough.

And then, I am continuing to scan old photographs. Below is one my favorites.

It’s my late mother fishing for trout in Idaho’s Birch Creek way back in 1987. She had MS but she was tough. She would pick a nice spot and go fishing. If she caught any that’s great, if she didn’t, it didn’t bother her too much because that is why they call it fishing instead of catching.

I am linking with Our World Tuesday, come join in!!

Our World – Hiking the Wasatch Mountains

I’ve been going through old film photos and scanning them. Remember those days. You go on a trip, you sparingly took photos because film and processing was expensive and you never knew if you what you took was any good. Oftentimes you didn’t have time to put them in an album so you stuck them in a drawer somewhere and forgot about them. That’s what happened to these photos.

Back in the 90’s, Heather and I went to Park City, Utah for our summer vacation. It was a few years before the Olympics and things were still kind of sleepy in town. We went hiking a few days in the Wasatch and nearby Uintah Mountains.

It was summertime but in the higher elevations it was still snow.

There’s me with the map thinking we should climb that mountain over there.

The Wasatch Mountains are some of the prettiest mountains I’ve ever seen. Of course I don’t remember any ugly mountains.

I’m linking with Our World Tuesday

Our World – Birds on the Back Fence

My wife Heather has been taking advantage of the this isolation to revamp our back yard and add bird feeders and such. So we are getting a lot more birds than we used to. Plus we have more time to sit out and watch them.

So its kind of fun. We have lots of squirrels also helping themselves to the feeders. I don’t care as long as they stay out of the attic.

So I am consulting inaturalist on some of the critters. I don’t have the patience to be a birder but I’ll do it opportunistically.

On a different note, we spent some time with Heather’s Mom yesterday celebrating Mothers Day. A good time was had by all. We got food from a local restaurant and so nobody had to cook!!

And I got a little drone time in as the clouds come rolling in. Check in later this week on my Skywatch Friday post for the images I captured.

I am linking up with Our World Tuesday

Our World – Hiking Oxley Nature Center

Sunday afternooon, after Heather and I headed for Oxley Nature Center in north Tulsa for a little hiking. We were wanting something kind of flat with little rocks.

We’ve had a lot of rain in Tulsa this year and Oxley is kind of low, it is very low in fact. They have lots of swampy areas like above.

Oxley has a lot of color, green. Lots and lots of green with not much other colors. We found this bloom. I am having trouble IDing it. The number one ID on iNaturalist is “Multiflora rose” which is an invasive species. What do you think?

We found these butterflies as well. We think we are two of them and that they are Silvery Checkerspots. Sorry for the butterfly porn.

I like this shot, it doesn’t make me look so fat.

And here is Heather in on of Oxley’s tree tunnels. We ended up tramping a little over three and a half miles. I think we went over almost all the trails that were not muddy. We had a good time.

Come check out the fun at Our World Tuesday!

Our World – Muskogee’s Honor Heights Park

Saturday the family was a little restless and we wanted to do something outside so we loaded up into the car rode down the turnpike to Muskogee, Oklahoma, about 40 minutes away to check out their Honor Heights Park.

Honor Heights is known for the Azalea Festival, which we missed by a couple weeks but there were still some blooms. My blog friends over the years have taught me to be appreciative of all the phases of blooms.

They did have all sorts of other plants to look at it including some beautiful lily’s like these.

We found a bunch of water lily’s alongside a small stream going through the property.

Heather and I really liked this Norway Maple. I had never heard of such a tree before and it is really striking.

This guy just wanted us to go home.

Somehow, Logan agreed to be a butterfly. He’s a big guy but he’s a butterfly now.

The Park had a lot of people but it is big at 132 acres and people stayed pretty well spread out. Most everything was open but the gift shop and playgrounds were closed due to the Covid-19 crisis. It wasn’t hard to physically distance ourselves from others.

We ran into a former teacher of Logan’s and her family, so we caught up, from about 15 feet away. It’s amazing to me how teachers remember their students.

So a good time was had by all. We gave Honor Heights Park five stars out of five. We’ll be back!

I am linking with Our World Tuesday.

Tulsa’s Centennial Park

Centennial Park is a quiet spot just to the southeast of downtown Tulsa. It’s actually a park built around a water detention pond as part of Tulsa’s flood prevention system.

Things are much better now but in years past with an urban park with nooks and crannies you never knew what you might see as you turned the corner on one of the paths. So I kind of shied away and kept my head on a swivel when I went there. Mostly it was homeless people and almost all of them just wanted to be left alone. Last week there was nobody there except a city parks employee who was interested in my drone flying.

The park has a big pond with two fountains and has the city center as a backdrop. Way back when this was one of my favorite running routes at noon, taking loop around the pond and paths.

That day though I was with my new toy trying to get something besides me out in the middle of a parking lot. The guy walking up in the video is the parks guy. He had sprayed for weeds a couple days before and he was just checking on things.

So stay safe, and maintain physical distancing!!!

Come join the fun at Our World Tuesday

Our World – What Makes Me Happy?

This might be the most selfish and self centered blog post in the world. Then again isn’t selfish and self centered at the heart of blogging in a way. I mean the internet has given us a voice so we go for it. Am I wrong? Is it a bad thing? I don’t think so. Also, the interwebs are full of grumpy people talking about what makes them grumpy. That is political blogging in a nutshell. The community of photobloggers though are pretty much about telling us what makes them happy and I’m good with that.

So now that I’ve justified my selfishness lets give it a go.

My family makes me happy, my bride of many years Heather our special son Logan. Rascal the Pomeranian makes me happy as well but near as much as the other two.

Then here is them two again and me. Make note of my expression. That is my big wide rarely seen smile.

Here is Lizzie, our diffident, fat little toad kitten. She probably isn’t a kitten more technically and she isn’t that loving generally but she makes me happy. She rules our household of three humans, one other cat and three dogs.

And beautiful landscapes make me happy. This is Woodward Park here in Tulsa. We have azaleas, dogwoods, and who knows what else going on here.

And Tulips make me very happy. The more the merrier, and the more colors, the better. I don’t care if they are a bit past prime like these, I love them all the same.

And I’ll take single tulips or tulips in a bunch.

And Azaleas, and how they are so lush and overwhelming.

And some more Azaleas.

Iris’s may be my favorite flower. The tissue like delicate petals are sublime.

And Wisteria, wisteria makes me very happy.

The Gilcrease Museum gardens are open at no charge seven days a week even though the museum is closed. They have this huge wisteria.

lafortune park baseball park signs DSCF9916-adjust

And baseball, baseball is shut down and it is killing me. Being there live is the thing. Nothing more boring than baseball on television. Well there is one thing. At my MIL’s house we were watching “The Greatest Story Every Told” the old movie. Of course the story is great but the movie puts seven R’s in Borrrrrrring. Low energy. They needed to cut in half and put in a chariot race. Oh yeah, they already did, its called Ben-Hur. Now that’s a good movie.

I hate the virus that has its grip on the world but I love the medical people who are risking their health taking care of the virus’s victims.

And art, love it. This is a sculpture at the Gilcrease Museum Gardens called “Twins” by Jay O’Melia. I think this is perfect.

Another scene from the Gilcrease Museum Gardens. It’s easy to maintain social distancing because nobody else is every there!! By the way, can we call it “Physical Distancing?” I don’t want to be socially distant. Sorry.

And here’s Heather again. I love sitting out on our patio with her.

And I love challenges. Heather got me a fancy drone for my birthday. It’s kind of cool. It has a GPS built in so when you tell it to stop somewhere, it maintains its position. I’ve two other learner drones and they just kind of did whatever they wanted to do. I want my technology to do what I want it to do. So anyway I put it up in the air, told it to stay and fished my camera out of my pocket and took a photo.

And I had it take a photo of me.

And then moved it a little closer and took another pic. And then it started to rain. I was trying to figure out how to do video and I think I have it but it is very rainy and windy. So it might be a few days before I can try it again.

I’m happy that my fellow citizens are helping to flatten the curve by following the guidelines. It feels un-natural and weird but we have to do what we can do.

Know something else that makes me happy is how people responded to this crisis. For example as I write this post, Mary Chapin Carpenter is singing a song from her house on facebook, lots of artists are doing similar things. Exercise instructors are doing Zoom workouts. Restaurants moved quickly for takeout options. It has been amazing how creative and resilient people are. It’s been amazing to see. Kudos to them.

So, there are tons more things that make me happy, but I’ll stop. What makes you happy?

In the meantime, stay home, and flatten the curve.

Hop on over to Our World Tuesday and join the fun.

YogisDen.us

Welcome to my world