Tulsa’s Lafortune Park
From the archives last January. I love how we can see the bones of the trees after the leaves all fall off. Fall and Winter are seasons of short days but great light and the opportunity to see familiar scenes differently. Here in Oklahoma it can get cold when a front blows through but generally there is a sunny warming period for a few days afterward where we get a short respite from Winter. It makes a big difference.
We went to see the Almost Christmas on Sunday afternoon. We loved it. It is a dysfunctional family type Christmas story. The Fandango synopsis of the movie is:
“An African-American widower (Danny Glover) asks his family — which includes his sassy sister-in-law (Mo’Nique) and four adult children (Kimberly Elise, Romany Malco, Gabrielle Union, and Jessie Usher), as well as the latter’s spouses and kids — to join him for their first Christmas since his wife passed away. However, having all of them under one roof leads to a number of personal confrontations as secrets are revealed and marriages are tested.”
The movie is fun and good hearted and a great Christmas time movie. Everybody in the movie (except the kids who are of course extremely cute and precocious) has issues and they have problems with each other and they pull some bone headed stunts but somehow it all works. It is along the lines of a Hallmark Christmas movie but with some soul and bite.
Everybody keeps their clothes on but there are some suggestive scenes.
I loved this movie.
Saturday night the family went to see Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them a new movie related to the the Harry Potter series of books and movies. It is set in 1920’s New York City and is both a prequel and a spinoff of the Harry Potter series of movies. JK Rowling wrote the screenplay.
The movie opens with Newt Scamander, a student of magical beasts, getting off a ship in New York on his way to Arizona. He has a mysterious leather suitcase that contains a variety of magical creatures from tiny little twigs that can pick locks to huge critters bigger than an elephant. Poor Scamander stumbles into an precarious time for wizards as tensions are high between the magical world and the muggles (except in America muggles are called nomags).
And there are plots twists and budding romances and really bad guys and politicians and it is all really engrossing and very well done.
There is a huge amount of stuff out on Al Gore’s world wide interwebs about the relationship between this movie and the Harry Potter series and all the cross references and such. I am not going to get into it. I’m here to tell you that this is a good movie and you don’t really have to have any knowledge about the Harry Potter movies to see it.
Check out the movie web site. Lots of good stuff there including an opportunity to make cool animated wanted posters.
I don’t know about you but we really enjoyed Thanksgiving this year (we do every year) we had a lot smaller group than usual but we did just fine. Uncle Bob drove up from Corpus Christi and the world’s greatest MIL hosted the dinner. We enjoyed fine food and fellowship most of the day.
The next day is the notorious Black Friday where everybody gets up terribly early and stands in line to trample their fellow humans to get half price televisions and laptops and such. Not us, we slept in. We had a guy trip to the Tulsa Zoo. No standing in lines there, easy parking, and friendly people!! I hope you enjoyed your shopping, we enjoyed our nonshopping.
The first critter we ran into was this grizzly. He doesn’t look too happy in there all by himself.
Next was this rattlesnake all coiled up and ready to strike. I don’t know much about rattlesnakes but I’m wondering if this is kind of an old guy judging by his filmy eyes. He might just be confused. I do geocaching and trail running and am always concerned about running into snakes. It seems we have more copperheads than rattlesnakes but I’m cautious nonetheless.
And an American Bald Eagle. They sure do look noble.
And a pair of American Albino Alligators. This dude is in serious need of some orthodontics.
And a Scarlet Ibis.
And a pic of son.
And a Golden Headed Lion Tamarin. He doesn’t look happy either.
And the flamingos are always cool and elegant.
The Rhino was up and doing this thing.
And the giraffes were reaching for their lunch.
And the elephants were having their meal as well.
I tried to see if the Zoo wanted this guy for the chimp exhibit. Nope, he eats too much he says.
There is a big construction project going on at the zoo. The Tulsa Zoo Lost Kingdom is going to be a huge addition with enhanced habitat for many of the critters. It is going to be finished sometime next year.
A good time was had by all. We celebrated Brother Bob’s birthday and so we had another excuse to eat well!!
I hope everybody had a good Thanksgiving and a pleasant Black Friday. We sure did.
I dropped the kid off at his Improv Comedy Class on Saturday and went in search of a few geocaches. First up was Evergreen Palace by TJFirey at Tulsa’s Heller Park. One of those you know easy park and grabs that everybody finds. I didn’t find it but walked around and took a few pics. There have been a bunch of caches at Heller Park over the years and I don’t know if I have found any of them!!
The area around “Up Joe Creek” Cache.
Not very far away was Bridge of Sorrows, by Thurstonhowell1. Another one with a great hint and everybody else is having a great time finding it but not for me!! A homeless guy came by with an old carpet sweeper that he found somewhere close by. He was pretty proud of it mainly because of the handle. He said, “Look, it still works.” and he ran it on the sidewalk and then he says “Damn, I’m picking up the pebbles.” I said, “Yep, its working great. My mom used to have one.” And he said, “I’ll have to figure a way to get those rocks out, but later, I have places to be now.” I said take care and he said nice to visit, “Same here, see you later!” I answered. I kind of like non mentally ill, non drug using homeless people.
Oops, sorry, this is a geocaching post and I didn’t find it. Next was Up Joe Creek by BlueStar99. This one took a little figuring out to get close to the cache. I had to use a business parking lot. I park far away from the building and was mindful of No Trespassing Signs, there were none. It took me a little bit to find this clever little cache but I did. First find of the day. I am big into the concept of Geocaching is all about the hunt but I do like to find them every now and then.
It was getting close to pick the kid up so I headed north and stopped at “Keep Speeding” by mindfulmomma right near Insterstate 44. I parked nearby and crossed the frontage road and found it. No homeless people, or anything. I found it. I’m on a roll!! Yeah Me!!
I head over and pick Logan up and we get something to eat and then I take him to his volunteer gig working for the Animal Rescue Foundation. Logan has a soft spot for dogs and cats and hates geocaching with a passion. Where did I go wrong that I have a kid that would rather clean out cat boxes than look for ammo boxes? Oh well, one of us needs counseling.
So I headed up through north Tulsa on my to Oxley Nature Center. I stopped short of Oxley to look for a cache named Heat Wave by The Sooners. It took me a little bit and then, Oh yeah, I’ve seen this before. I drove a little further to another one of those, easy to find, fun caches that everybody else can find but me, named TICO #2 by glenjonz. And yep, I didn’t find it. I have a complex about easy caches.
Next up was a full size cache in Oxley Nature Center that was had some good reviews called Nature of Mohawk by Skitzo666. I live for full size caches in the woods. So I parked nearby and looked around and walked here and there and looked high and then looked low and then got down on my hands and knees and went looking in the tough spots and easy spots and started looking farther and farther away and then repeated the whole process
I decided to log and DNF and go do something else. Just then a car drove up and parked and a guy popped out and asked if I was looking for the cache. He said he was the cache owner and somebody reported the cache was missing. He went to one of the spots where I looked and reported yep it was missing. He said he was going to replace it at a different spot so I wandered off far enough to where I could hear him but not see him and then he left. He told me the general area where it was so I found it easily enough. What a great cache owner Skitzo666 is. Salud to you guy. You are doing it right.
So I turned off the GPSr, retrieved my “good”camera from the car and headed up a water pipeline into Oxley’s Northwoods Loop Trail that I posted about on Sunday.
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Saturday I went for a walk at Oxley Nature Center‘s North Woods. I love it there because it is remote, off the beaten path, and I rarely see anybody.
I especially like it when it is windy because there is enough trees and brush to block the wind. It is near still at the ground and I love the sound of the wind in the tops of the trees.
The trails are well kept. This time of year there is a thick matt of dried leaves that announces your presence as you walk along and sends the big and small critters scurrying.
I started in late afternoon and the low sun made all the leaves radiant with color.
There is something about a bench on a trail overlooking a creek that is restful without even sitting on it.
The woods loom over parts of the trails. I call these tree tunnels.
I love the color of some of the oak leaves.
Another tree tunnel.
The sun is getting low. Heading across my favorite boardwalk. There is a geocache here that took me three years to find. And one day I saw it without looking for it.
Headed back to the car and saw these two critters. We watched each other for a while. I would move up twenty paces and wait twenty seconds, and then move up another twenty paces and so on. They got tired of my game and scampered off.
A little bit further I found this single deer. She played my game and let me get a little closer before she turned on her heel and left.
I didn’t set any speed records but I had a good time. Didn’t see anybody else. I wasn’t looking for anybody either.
The tempietto in the gardens of Tulsa’s Philbrook Museum is a popular photo in town. I am always looking for different ways to photograph it.
Here is my Super Moon photo!! Actually I was a day late. I flew up to Idaho to visit my Dad in his Assisted Living Center and I neglected to take my moon camera. So I took this the day after the Super Moon Full Moon so I was close. I have a Canon SX40 SuperZoom and boy does it take great (at least I think they are great, okay) moon shots. I used to use a tripod with it but now I just hold in my hands on the auto setting a let her rip (as we say in Oklahoma). And if you know me, you know I cheated. If the skies are clear I haul out the Canon every time the moon is full and take a few shots . Of course the moon being the moon it doesn’t ever change much so I could really be cheating on this. But you know that I would never do that.
Dad and I. I think this is like his third or so ever selfie. He has a lot of catching up to do. Not that he feels the need for it. He doesn’t understand why everybody spends all their time looking at their phones.
This is a door wreath that my sweet, crafty, and considerate sister Ellen made for Dad. If you look closely at his US Forest Service Arm patch from his uniforms, a Smokey Bear, and a University of Idaho rifle team patch from his letter sweater. Dad had to drastically downsize when he moved early this year and Ellen was able to recycle some of the items into this wreath.
I took a run on Idaho Falls’ river trails. It was ridiculously warm while I was there but is frosty now. Just so you know I’m going to recycle this pic at some point in the future. Idaho is just so beautiful!
I stayed in a separate room at the Assisted Living Center. I think he is in a good place. The staff is very nice and very patient and they know everybody. The rooms are nice and the food is pretty decent. They have lots of activities planned and a couple of vehicles to get everybody to their doctor’s appointments and shopping and such.
The Falls that give the town its name are very dramatic. I never get tired of going to see them.
So we had a good visit. I got him to go to an exercise class and we both had a great time. The two instructors were very nice and inclusive and very supportive and the other students were having a great time so hopefully dad will go back.
A cool link between Idaho Falls where my Dad lives and northeast Oklahoma where I live is that Wilson Rawls, who wrote “Where the Red Fern Grows” wrote it while he lived in Idaho Falls. He and the book are celebrated with this sculpture in front of the city library.
But I didn’t take my camera so I took the pic of the moon after I got back to Tulsa.
I have to brag that no filter was used in this shot and have to confess that it is from my archives. five years ago while on a trip to see my sister and her family in Colorado. I also suspect that I may have posted it back then. Hey, I never claimed to be a Boy Scout, even though I was. Well maybe I tell to much.
