Late afternoon last Wednesday on Tulsa’s Turkey Mountain at a small pond. I just love running the trails there. Once I get more than a quarter mile from the parking lot I have the whole park to myself. One thing about the area is that there is not a whole lot of money budgeted for maintenance. We depend on volunteers to show up and do everything from clear downed limbs from trails and pick up trash. But if a tree falls over into a pond. So be it! It is part of the wildness that we love about it.
Pepsi Lake on Tulsa’s Turkey Mountain. The bright white objects on the far shore to the left are Pepsi delivery truck chassis’s put on the dam. Why? I have no idea.
Wednesday nights are my night to go running after work. I have a little routine. I leave work and go to a liquor store and pick up some craft beer and then I head out either to the Arkansas River trails or Turkey Mountain. Last Wednesday it started a downpour just as I was leaving downtown but my good ole Accuweather app on the phone said it was not going to rain for at least two hours so I’m good right?
So started out on the Yellow Trail taking pics with my Ipod Touch using the Hipstamatic App. I just love blurry photos. My intention was to try and do six miles or so.
This is my favorite spot on the Yellow Trail. I just tell people to follow the arrow. Nobody listens to me but I say it anyway. I repeat myself a lot that way.
This is my favorite new landmark on the Yellow Trail. It reminds me of something new I’m reading a little about lately Trail Marker Trees. Trees that Native Americans shaped as trail markers or other uses. Check the link. I’d love to see a few live. I’m a little skeptical about them personally.
I stopped a smelled a few roses. Metaphorically.
And check out some color.
Just as I got to the north end of the Yellow Trail it started raining, hard. I put away my Ipod and got out my waterproof Nikon. People tell me about how much they love raining in the rain. I don’t like it too much but if you are out in it and wearing tech clothes then it is not so bad. I decided to cut my run short and run the upper Yellow trail back.
The mud sticks to your shoes and things get a lot slipperier but I eventually got back to my car.
The only thing worse than running in the rain would be riding a bike. The thunder and lightening was getting pretty bad also. That can ruin your whole day.
If I had it to do over again, I’d do it over again. And no, I didn’t go home and drink the beer I bought earlier. You see we are much more godly people in Oklahoma than where you live because our laws don’t allow us to purchase cold full strength beer. So I drank some of the beer I bought last week!! That is called pre-planning.
Great news for those of us who love Turkey Mountain. The City of Tulsa announced that Simon Property Group has formally withdrawn their proposal to build an outlet mall on Turkey Mountain and will pursue building the shopping center in the Tulsa suburb of Jenks. I love that Simon came to their senses. Building a shopping center on the mountain was a very stupid idea for a bunch of reasons. Kudos to a lot of people and organizations and especially the Tulsa Urban Wilderness Coalition for getting this stopped. It is not often in Oklahoma that the people step up and say no to big business on something dumb like this. Their efforts got a lot more people into the park which made things kind of crowded sometime but I think people realized what a treasure we whad.
Saturday morning Logan and I headed out to Turkey Mountain and met up with some other people who love Turkey Mountain.
Not my photo, Logan and I are are the far right. Notice my special bug proof pants I’m wearing.
The local Anheuser Busch office had an employee volunteer day where about 30 to 40 their folks and spouses, and kids, and grandkids in some cases helped us repair trails and reseed some bare areas.
Logan and I went with a couple down the Red Trail with shovels and rakes. Tell you what, even though it wasn’t that hot, we were all sweating in no time. It was humid. Still, even though Red is not very long we spent a couple areas working on about four or five bad spots so we did some good I think. We were all worn out. We finished a little early and I thought Logan and I could help with the reseeding but nope, I was worn out and so was Logan.
The Anheuser Busch all worked very hard. They know how to have fun also. They had a trailer set up with video games. They coolers of water and I’m sure beer and were cooking up hamburgers and were playing games. We helped ourselves to some water but felt the need to get to some air conditioning and a shower.
Have you heard the news!! Simon Property Group is abandoning their Turkey Mountain outlet mall project. They are going to put it in a much more appropriate site in the Tulsa suburb of Jenks. Read about it here. A site that people repeatedly brought up during the discussions on the project. The site should work better for Simon. You can also read more info here to learn how to enhance the view of property with the help of experts.
Of course the city of Jenks will get the sales tax revenue, or at least the promise of it given the huge subsidies that Simon was looking for in terms of paying for infrastructure and other types of corporate welfare they were looking for to help with the economics of the their project.
I couldn’t be happier for all involved. Now comes the real work. Money needs to be raised to buy the remaining land on Turkey Mountain at market value in order to preserve it. Tulsa is growing and it is just a matter of time before somebody else tries to develop it. It is not fair to the landowners to expect them to provide people like me free land to enjoy.
In the meantime, I’m happy that Simon came to their senses. I don’t think they expected the buzzsaw of opposition that they riled up with their proposal. I’m also proud of my fellow Tulsans. Despite Oklahoma’s populist roots, large corporations do pretty much what they want to do in Oklahoma these days. It is nice to see a little push back in a case like this where something bad was fixing to happen (as we say in Oklahoma.)
I found this dancing tree during one of my evening runs on Turkey Mountain. I love the way the leaves reflect the low sun on its way down. A few minutes after this, it starts getting dark up on the mountain and it would be time to head back to the parking lot but I’m always wanting to go a little bit further. I love the feeling of being out in the middle of nowhere.
Last Tuesday night I went over to Turkey Mountain and did a little (darned little) trail running and geocaching. I started out on the Red Trail to go find some caches. I passed a couple that was walking along really slowly looking at their GPSr and I asked if they were geocaching. The guy put the GPSr behind his back and said, “What’s that.” Newbies, why are they so embarrassed? Cuz they should be is the answer.
It took a while for my GPSr to lock on so I kind of wibble wobbled as you might see from the Garmin Connect map at the end of this post but it finally synched with the satellites (thank you my fellow American taxpayers for those satellites I’ll add here.) My first cache was difficult. It required a double backward flip off this fallen tree and a clean landing. Believe it or not I did it and so claimed the cache. Proof, you say? Well I told you that I did it didn’t I?
Then the next one not too far away. All I had to do was stick my hand somewhere I didn’t want to. Nothing bit me, this time.
And I climbed out of the Red Tail area via the Fro Flo trail. I love going the wrong way is all I can say. I went uphill on the Fro Flo guys. Gasps from the Turkey Mountain free riders.
There are several videos on Youtube of the Fro Flo by riders using their Go Pro cameras. This one had some good views of the jumps.
I’m trying to figure out what this is for.
This one looks fun. Would you ride your bike up this ramp and then down the length of the log. Yeah, well me neither.
So anyway I got back to the parking lot and started up the blue trail to the top of Lipbuster and looked for a cache (and didn’t find it) near the water tanks and then I noticed another cache on my GPSr about a quarter mile away. I thought, maybe I could bushwhack it over there.
Not a good idea. One thing led to another. Thorns, tall grass, thickets, scratches, blood, insects. No snakes though. That I could see anyway. Fortunately I had used deet before my run so no ticks or chiggers.
I finally found a clearing. Where I could make some headway.
And then out in the middle of nowhere I found Little Miss Blue Eyes. Kind of cute don’t you think. Kind of spooky is what I think. Eventually I found a trail and made it to the cache site and found it and then I kind of took a wrong turn.
You see there were some new trails up there and I didn’t know how they ran so I just went with it and took quite a tour of the southwestern side of the mountain before I made it back to the Snake Trail. By then it was pitch dark and I didn’t do a whole lot of running.
I passed a cop car with its lights on. I think they were looking for the old fat guy going up the wrong way on Fro Flo.
Late afternoon sun on Turkey Mountain, Tulsa, Oklahoma. It is threatened with an Outlet Mall.
“Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realize we cannot eat money.” — Cree Indian proverb
“Keep close to Nature’s heart … and break clear away, once in a while, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.” — John Muir
I went running on Turkey Mountain here in Tulsa last Wednesday night. It felt great, the temperature was cool, and there wasn’t very many people. I had a great time. I stopped by one of the ponds and took a pic of the reflections in the water. We’ve had some rain lately so there is water in the ponds and lakes.
Todd Huston of Tulsa went to Simon’s headquarters in Indianapolis and tried to present them with a petition signed by 8000 people asking them to cancel their mall plans and a t shirt.
Believe it or not some people actually want a mall at the location and are beginning to make themselves heard. Hey this is a free country.
