Found me a nice suspension bridge at the nearby Ray Harrel Nature Park. All great nature parks have nice bridges, right?
I love railroad tie retaining walls. The look all old school and woodsy. They end up kind of blending in and becoming part of the landscape.
Logan and I went for a little hike on New Years Eve. He had his wisdom teeth taken out a few days ago and he was supposed to be quiet but by NYE both he and I were pretty owly and needed some fresh air and walking time. I have a hard to shake sinus infection and so I haven’t been doing much either.
So off he went!! He isn’t into running much but he was pretty restless. We went to Ray Harral Nature Park in Broken Arrow, a suburb of Tulsa. I kind of like it. It has lots of trails and not very many people. By planning your route you can get a couple miles in by varying the loops available.
The woods were grey but I did find a cardinal hiding from me in the shadows for a bit of red.
I finally catching up with the kid. There is something about pedestrian bridges that I love. I alos feel compelled to tilt the camera. For some reason it seems more interesting.
How about you? What do you tilt the camera for?
I’m linking with Shadow Shot Sunday today.
I wish everybody a Happy and Prosperous New Year!!
I went on a run at Tulsa’s Oxley Nature Center this week. I have taken off the whole week between Christmas and New Years and the weather has been quite mild. Unlike other parks around town, Oxley has their trails extremely well marked some even with gates like this. I’m a Forest Service kid and I love this type of construction. And, who can resist checking out a trail called the “Meadowlark Prairie Trail.”
And I am donating a free shadow selfie at no extra cost.
as a PS I am ashamed to say that I have subscribed to Photoshop for over a year and just this week have been figuring out how it works. I had always discounted Lightroom before but I have learned it is an integral part of the whole process. You do the easy edits in Lightroom and then pass the photo easily on to Photoshop. And then you can pass it back. Easy Peasy. Plus I have some of the Topaz Filters and have learned that the they are easily integrated into Photoshop as well. In the photo above I used I used a free Nik Filter from Google. They made them free in March of 2016 and they are very powerful. Anyway, they are integrated into Photoshop also.
I feel kind of dumb but having a little time to study things shows me that I have been wasting a lot of time. Better late than never I guess.
My favorite go to 3 mile walking/running loop is Lafortune Park just a few miles from the house. The trail goes around a golf course, tennis courts, and a playground, and by a several ponds so there almost always moments to rest a little bit and snap a pic or two. I’m always wanting to yell “You the Man!” or “In the Hole!!” at the golfers but never have, probably never will. I used to work with a guy who when we played golf with the CEO of our employer would say, when the CEO hit the ball, “Oh my gosh, look at the ball go!!” He even said it when I hit it, or whiffed it as mostly the case. I always thought it was funny.
We were celebrating my wife’s birthday yesterday and when we got home I noticed that we had a full moon. So I dug out my trust Canon SX40 Superzoom and took a few pics of the moon. I an one of them through Topaz Textures and then uploaded onto my Ipod Touch and used DistressedFX to further process the image to bring out the features of the moon. This moon doesn’t have a cool name like some of the other moons. It is called the Long Night Moon.
Saturday I dropped the kid off for his Comedy Improv Class and headed up to the Philbrook Museum to walk around a little while. It was their free second saturday promotion going on inside so I went outside to the gardens to get a little air and breathing room. I went to the bottom of the hill and shot back up to Villa Philbrook. I never get tired of the view and in the winter it seems a little crisper even on a cold overcast day.
This is the reverse view. I never get tired of the tempietto and its reflection but I pulled back the shot a bunch to take in the patchwork of colors, textures, and patterns.
I just love that place.
Saturday morning started out cool with a chance of rain. I thought about putting up the outside Christmas lights on house but I don’t like doing that in the rain. I don’t mind running in a light rain though. I have the gear for it. So after dropping the kid off at his Improv Comedy class I headed to Turkey Mountain. There was hardly anyone there.
It was kind of a dreary gray day, just the way I like them, and so off I went with a vague desire to do about five miles plus or minus and take some new trails. The big well used trails are fine but I love the fainter seldom used ones also. As you can see there were lots of dry leaves on the ground. The squirrels were having a field day running around in them making a racket.
I take it as a point of honor to never (well almost never) turning back on a trail because it disappears or requires climbing up or down a cliff. This trail ended up requiring it. It is at the far north end of Turkey Mountain and I had to climb down a steep hill and then climb back up out on the other side of the draw. Oh well. Slows me down but I’m not in it for the speed.
I saw only one bicyclist and very few other people the whole time I was out there.
I guess that somebody lost their camo hat and some other person picked it up and stuck it on a tree. I always wonder who besides a hunter needs camo gear. When I’m out in the woods, I want to be seen.
Being out in the woods in nature is a great escape. Maybe I’ll do the lights on Sunday. The Cowboys aren’t playing you know.
It is Autumn and with the lower sun and the less foliage on the trees it seems that there is more shadows to look at than summertime.
I took these with my Nikon AW110 point and shoot. It has in-camera filters. I use the “Toy Camera” setting sometimes. So I can proudly say that these are SOOC, right? With digital photography especially I do not really know what that means?
A lot of trees have lost their leaves and a lot still have their leaves on in like a last second burst of glory. I found this tree just south of downtown earlier this week. I loved the view underneat the leaves with the sun shining through.
The same tree a few minutes later across the street and it has a decided more reddish appearance. What’s the deal!!??
We fell back yesterday, which is fine for a Sunday. Today was a long day at work and when I left it was dark and rainy. It makes me want to hibernate until Spring. So now I will go to work in the dark and leave.
I’ll have to go back to running in the dark for my Wednesday night runs.
And I doubt that I’ll go run the night trail runs on Turkey Mountain any longer. I feel too much. When I fell i didn’t just stumble and fall I mean I pancaked. I probably set off seisometers.
Speaking of seisometers. We had an earthquake here in Oklahoma. It was very near Cushing which is a big oil hub in North America. It is where the international benchmark “West Texas Intermediate” is set. Not a good place for an earthquake.
Many people in Oklahoma, whether in the industry or not, are not happy with our Governor, (who once called earthquakes “Freedom Shakes”) and her merry band of idiots.
Oh well,
Sunday morning, TATUR (“Tulsa Area Trail and Ultra Runners”) held their “Turkey N Taturs” races,10K, 25K, and 50K all on Turkey Mountain. I ran the 10K which for this crowd is like a fun run.
The start was cool, sunny, and dry, perfect for running.
The course was a good mixture of flat and level, hills, rocks, and roots. It had a great rhythm to it. Being Sunday morning there were not too many other people out on the mountain.
I ran about half the race by myself and the last half with a friend who had about the same pace as I did. Running with somebody makes the race a lot easier. I tend to go faster when I’m with somebody.
One of the great things about trail races is the aid stations. I had a shot of some sort of liquor at this one. I’m not sure if that was a good idea or not. It kind of stuck with me for a while.
As you can see the course wound all over the mountain. The 25K and 50K guys looped over the east side to get their distances in. The 50K was two laps of the 25K route.
And a good time was had by all. Last I checked I finished dead last out of 32 men who had finished by then. But hey, I beat everybody who slept in that day right?
A big thank you to fine folks at TATUR and the many volunteers that it takes to put on an event like this and to my fellow racers.