Scavenger Hunt Sunday – Outside Edition

1. Sunglasses

These sunglasses belong to Irv, the wolrd’s great BIL. He puts up with a lot from his BIL is what I think.

2. Summer

We just got back from vacation on the Gulf Coast. We all got sand between our toes.

3. Outside

This is a “Tiny Planet” view of the beach. Tiny Planet takes a photograph and kind of folds it in on itself. There are various websites and phone apps that can do it.

4. Green

I saw this dude on Turkey Mountain a couple weeks ago. I could almost outrun him. I got winded and had to stop and rest or I would have kept up with him better.

5. Healing

Running the trails of Turkey Mountain is my Happy and Healing Place.

What about you? Where is your Happy Place?

Scavenger Hunt Sunday

“Hidden History of Tulsa” by Steve Gerkin

I found “Hidden History of Tulsa” at our local Barnes and Noble. The author, Steve Gerkin, was having a book signing and I grabbed a copy and talked with him a little bit about the book. I mean I love hidden things, history, and Tulsa so it was like the holy trinity.

The book is a compilation of several articles that Mr. Gerkin wrote for “This Land” magazine. I thought I knew a lot about Tulsa history but the author brought a lot of new information to me. He writes a lot about Tulsa’s racial history, in particular the prominent role the Ku Klux Klan played in the early 20th century including the participation in the Klan by several of our prominent civic citizens at the time. He also provides new (to me) information about the Tulsa Race Riot. I found all that fascinating. Personally I think the scars from that era affect Tulsa today.

He covers a lot more including a 1929 dirigible flyover by the US Navy’s USS Los Angeles including pictures of downtown with office workers crowding the rooftops of the highrises downtown watching the spectacle. He also gets into some of Tulsa Oilman Harry Sinclair’s participation in the Teapot Dome Scandal.

Anyway, I loved this book and give it a five star rating.

Weekend Reflections – A View of the Bay

Weekend Reflections

Skywatch Friday – Palm Trees at Orange Beach

Skywatch Friday

Wordless Wednesday – Double Exposure

Blue Bayou Monday

I’ve been back from vacation a full week now and although I love my job and the peopleI with my mind tends to wander back to the Bon Secour River near Mobile Bay.

Oh well, we got bills to pay and a kid to educated. Work, work, work!!

Where does your mind wander?

Our World Tuesday – Fireworks

Hey I know the Fourth of July is over. That is alright I’m still going to post fireworks pics from Tulsa’s fireworks show on the Fourth.

The show gets bigger and better every year and the fireworks ever more complex.

People show up and spend hours there picnicing and hanging out. We used to do that but we have figured out a way to get there late and leave early. That leaves all sorts of time for people watching.

I love taking pictures of people taking pictures. Just so you know.

Like this, I’ve also captured the famous leaning tower of Tulsa. Don’t laugh too hard. A local lady got convicted of murder last year for pushing her husband out a window of that building.

Heather would never do that!! But I can’t tell what she is thinking right now. Oh well, back to the fireworks.

Like I said people show up all during the day, some spend hours out under the hot sun.

There is music and portapottys and lots of beer drinking.

The thing about fireworks show is that even though people come all through the day.

As soon as the finale is over everybody goes home.

Did you go see fireworks this year? Or did you stay at home and terrorize the neighborhood dogs?

Our World Tuesday

Scavenger Hunt Sunday – Red, White, and Blue Edition

1. Red

I found this at a street festival here in Tulsa.

2. White

From my Lomography SuperSampler Camera.

3. Blue

For years my Dad provided the music for the Dubois, Idaho Rodeo Parade. He had a tape player and some big speakers he put on the back of his pickup. The dude in the western hat is my brother-in-law Irv. My son Logan is the young man riding with Irv in the back of the truck.

4. Play

This is son teaching his cat LJ how to play the piano. I don’t think the lesson’s stuck.

5. Sparkle

This is what happens when you violate a rule of photography that says to never shoot into the sun. That’s okay because I’m a picture taker. Us picture takers don’t recognize any rules. We just go merrily about our way taking bad pictures. I kind of liked this one though.

Scavenger Hunt Sunday

Mr Mercedes by Stephen King

This is a little bit of a change for Stephen King. This is a detective novel and a darned good one at that.

A man drives a stolen Mercedes Benz into a crowd somewhere in mid America a few years ago and kills several of them. He leaves behind a mask and hardly anything else and is known only by his media given nickname Mr Mercedes. The lead detective on the case Bill Hodges works on it for a time and then retires without solving it.

His retirement is not going very well and gets so bad he considers suicide from time to time. Mr Mercedes decides to try and nudge him over the deep end and sends Hodges a letter taunting him. That gets Hodges back involved in the case on an unofficial basis.

The story, like in a good detective novel, has lots of twists and turns and unexpected events. Hodges finds an unlikely pair to team up with as they try and solve the case. Mr Mercedes himself is quite the interesting guy and it is entertaining to see point/counterpoint as the story develops.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and give it five stars out of five!

This book is the first of a planned trilogy. I can’t wait for the next installment.

Running a New Trail on Turkey Mountain

It was Wednesday night and I took advantage of my weekly kitchen pass to go to Turkey Mountain to run a few miles. It has been a few weeks since I had been there and I was missing it. Check out this anchor, if you need tourism related information.

I took off on the well known trails. There were less people than usual on the mountain even though the weather was very mild.

Turkey Mountain has several marked trails, some with nice neat official looking markers. This marker is on the blue trail. People that go to Turkey Mountain a lot know that the official marked trails are just a framework. There are a multitude of unmarked trails. The unmarked trails are what makes the mountain fun. I think I have been on almost all of them. Or so I thought.

The pink trail is a semiofficial trail on the west side of the mountain. It is probably the least traveled and known of the trails but also the longest and most complex.

I like to go “off the reservation” to the seldom used trail on the other side of Elwood. I hardly ever see people there. I have seen a lot of deer there in the last year or so. I used to see lots of deer on main part of the mountain but as the park has gotten busier the deer have got scarcer.

The trail is a single loop and it is very difficult to get lost.

But on Wednesday night, I noticed a new trail with a new marker. Zoi? What is that. What does it mean. Anyway I took off down that trail. It was brand new. I had heard reference on facebook to somebody running several miles of brand new trail on Turkey Mountain and I wondered where it was. Well, I think I found it. The only thing was that it went on and on.

And it was marked with pink ribbons. It was quite long and I got to wondering what the deal was. Does it loop back on itself or does it fizzle out or just what. I ran into some bikers that were dismounted and were clearing what they called a “cutoff” to bypass a real bad section just ahead. I bid them adieu and headed off to find the “bad section.” I kind of like bad sections.

I got passed by a bunch of bikers going pretty fast.

Later on I found the bad section and discovered that the fricking frackers had been there ahead of me. I’m actually a fan of fricking frackers, they put food on the table in my house. Seriously though this well looked like it still had tubing in it and a sucker rod string. What’s up with that? The tubing looks open to atmosphere and so there is probably no harm done, probably.

I finally found my way back to the connection to the existing trails. I was pretty happy. Not too many days when you can find new trails in an area where I thought I knew it all.

It is no fun being a know it all is what I say. What about you? What do you say

YogisDen.us

Welcome to my world