Went on a hike on Turkey Mountain this week. (Like almost all weeks)
Checked out the new trail construction going on at the “String of Pearls.” Three ponds that used to be inaccessible because of thick shrubs and thorns.
Checked out the panoramic view at “The Hub” – the highest point on Turkey Mountain and has several trails going in and several going out including two wicked bicycle downhill runs.
We had a decent sunrise the house the other day.
I went to Philbrook Museum’s gardens and checked out the tulips.
And a perfectly formed maple tree.
Made a photo of tulips, a redbud tree, the Tempietto, and the sky.
I told my wife Heather all about it.
So I came back with her the very next day.
The tulips and everything else and more was still there.
Son Logan came with us and we checked out the Cabin.
And had some ice cream at a nearby place. A good time was had by all.
And yet another Lego critter, this time a zebra from our earlier trip to the Tulsa Botanic Garden.
I have been busy. I love being busy. Especially being retired and doing the things I want to do.
I went out to Turkey Mountain and checked out the new board walk they installed over the western rock faces of the mountain. This is an area called Rock City and I love how they put the walk right in and over the boulders using cedar that was cut on the mountain.
It is a small network of new trails interconnecting with two trails, one on top of the rock faces and one below. I bet it would be fun on a bicycle. It looks like they put a mesh on top of the cedar to add a little traction for the bikes. You slip off the wood on a bike it would ruin your whole day. Me and gravity are not friends these days so I will never take my bike across this.
I ventured back to the parking lot on the Tiger Muffin trail. It’s the trail name for a friend of mine.
Last Saturday I put my cold weather gear on and joined a bunch of people from the Tulsa Urban Wilderness Coalition and Bike Club to clean up a trail called Mooser Creek Greenway. It had a lot of tree falls from Tulsa’s Father’s Day windstorm last year. The trails were cleared back then but a lot of the downed were a little unsightly. Plus there is a never ending chore of repairing erosion and wet spots on trails.
So I helped clear the limbs and trunks that were being cut up by people with chain saws.
I love the trail work days. Tulsa really responds to stuff like that and all sorts of people show up to help. I got a promotion with the Wilderness Coalition. I am now the Vice President of Government Affairs. My trail job didn’t change much. Moving limbs and cut up trunks off the trail is what I do along with whatever else needs doing.
Later that day Heather and I went out to the Tulsa Botanic Garden to check out the flowers and new projects.
They have added an event space in the middle of the pond. They are also converting some wild land they had into an arboretum. They have done a good job adding onto the gardens and it is getting more and more settled as time goes on.
The tulips put on a quite a show. Last year when we went some deer had gone into the gardens ate a bunch of the tulips and other plants.
They also had Lego animals scattered around the garden. I love this woodpecker.
And I always love redbuds. The Eastern Redbud is the State Tree of Oklahoma.
The Daffodils were putting on a show even though their time is short.
This was my favorite tulip. It looked black in the sun but is actually a deep purple. This one is the only one I spotted.
And to end up, we had an almost full moon the other day. I captured the image in the late afternoon so it was almost a daytime moon. I love the moon in all its presentations but I especially love a good daytime moon.
I love geocaching. If you don’t know what that is, it’s an online game that you play in the physical world. People hide containers (geocaches) out in the world and then input the gps coordinates online (at geoaching.com) and then others go and look for them and record their success or failure online at the same web site. Most people use an app on their smart phone to play these days. (A better explanation is by geocaching.com at this link.) Over the years I have found almost 2200 caches and hidden about 30 or so. Only three are still active.
Loading the caches
There are ethics to geocaching that you take care of the caches you hide. If they go missing or get damaged or something changes in any way then the expectation is that the owner of the cache needs to replace or repair, or disable it so other people don’t waste their time looking for it. I had two caches that had gone missing so I set about replacing them. The caches are in remote areas and I like to make them easy to find. Also, the expectation is on longer caches is that there be trade items. Mainly they are there for people who bring their kids with them. The idea is that you can take a toy or item from a cache if you have something equal or better to trade.
The first cache I replaced is in a patch of urban woods at the junction of three freeways in Tulsa. It is in a floodplain and hardly anybody would just go there for recreation. So you can get close on a bike trail.
And then you have to duck under one of the freeways and head to the woods.
I put it several feet above the ground. The area floods a lot so there is no use hiding it on the ground plus I like to people to find my caches so I made it kind of obvious.
So I took a different route back to my car. That was interesting. It wasn’t the terrain I though it was going to be. I went close to several homeless encampments and the back property of several businesses and it wasn’t much fun in terms of a hike but it was interesting. The thing is I hate going out and back on the same route. I like loops so I made a loop.
The prettiest part of the hike!
The next cache was on Turkey Mountain. I use the Turkey Mountain parking lots it is 2.5 miles to the cache site. I was in a hurry so I parked at the YMCA adjoining the Turkey Mountain. I’m a member so I just checked in at the office and used the Y’s trails, which interconnect with Turkey Mountain’s trails and saved my a lot of time.
I love trail bridges!!
Here is a view of the Y from across their lake (on Turkey Mountain, ponds are called lakes for some reason. Probably because they named a hill, Turkey Mountain.)
And here is the sign, 2.5 miles to the other parking lot. So I got kind of an express pass.
So is the general location of the cache site. This is the Rock City area of Turkey Mountain. I hid the cache a lot better than I did the other one because there all sorts of bikers and hikers on trails on both sides of the cache. Years ago I hid the cache in amongst those rocks. Bad idea. Nobody could find it and nobody wanted to because they were afraid of snakes. I am afraid of snakes too!! Plus when I did look for it I never could find it. So I would hide another one. That is great except somebody say, “Hey I found two caches close together. Which one is the right one?” That’s embarrassing. So I started hiding it close to the same location but not in the rocks.
This cache is a lot more fun and interesting place to go hiking than the other place.
So I got them both replaced the same day. Lot of fun!! And you can tell that on this second hike, I made a double loop out of it.
I headed up to Tulsa’s Wooward Park to see if the Daffodils were blooming.
And oh, man!! They sure were blooming. The blooms were fresh and people hadn’t picked them, yet.
They were beautiful. There were a couple of young women sitting in amongst them (they were carefully making sure they were not trampling photos) and taking selfies. Usually I take photos of all people doing selfies but I left them alone to enjoy the flowers. They were probably taking photos of me and posting about the creepy old guy lurking about.
They also had lots of hyacinths.
And tulips
They had forsythia shrubs blooming
And rebuds. I’ve always loved that stone staircase.
The big trees don’t have their leaves yet.
And they still have remnants of trees knocked down on during our Father’s Day Windstorm in 2023.
I went walking a couple times at Tulsa’s Lafortune Park. Treated to the sunset one time.
I noticed this brush with beautiful coral flowers. Google lens tells me that it is Chinese Quince.
The redbud trees are starting to bud out. The Eastern Redbud is Oklahoma’s State Tree. I love them.
Fuzzy pic of people playing golf at one of the golf courses there.
Memorial High School has a baseball field that they were using.
I also went geocaching at Expo Square. I didn’t find the one here but I love this locomotive. It is retired now but pulled logging trains in southeast Oklahoma for years.
And checked out the Golden Driller there. It is dressed up in honor of City Year Tulsa’s tenth anniversary. They are the sponsor the people I tutor for. City Year is under attack for pushing a “woke ideology.” I’ve been tutoring grade school kids for five years now and the only ideology I have been trained to push on the kids is learning how to read.
Another geocaching stop. I didn’t find this one either but I loved the windmill in the stiff Oklahoma breeze.
Another time I went to Tulsa’s Oxley Nature Center and walked the trails.
The latest full moon, yep, I amped it up too much so it is a little grainy. My bad. I like it though.
I never get tired of Tulsa’s downtown skyline, as humble as it is.
I never get tired of seeing the flag wave in a stiff breeze. I think everybody should be proud of their country. Since I started tracking it, people from 152 countries have visited my humble blog. I wish them all well.
A local Pony League baseball field. Baseball is right around the corner!!
Lake Bixhoma is a water supply lake for the Tulsa suburb of Bixby. It is known for its clean water and protection from wind since it is surrounded on three sides by hills. It has a few hiking trails that are known for being kind of tough plus they have all sorts of venomous snakes there. I’ve been lucky and never seen one except for a water snake last year. The place also has a geocache that has not been found in four years. So I wanted to do two things. Find the cache and hike completely around the lake which I have never done before. I also wanted to lessen the chances of serpent encounter by doing the hike while the snakes were still in brumation (the snake form of hibernation.)
So I started off at the beginning. I couldn’t make heads nor tails of this map at the time. All I wanted to do was avoid the “snake farm” indicated on the upper part of the map. Off I went. You don’t really need a map. Just keep the lake in sight and you’ll be okay. That turned out not to be totally true.
The trail is a mix of old road, nice single track and some pretty technical rocky sections.
They used to have a road that went deeper into the park and had picnic pavilions, restrooms and such. These are now abandoned.
There is evidence of old farms and houses here. I’m told that this is a model T axle. How it got there, I don’t know.
There is a little creek flowing into the lake.
Last year I came looking for the cache and turned back at this creek crossing. I had my good camera with me and no walking stick. So I didn’t want to take a tumble into the water. This year I came upon a young woman who had two dogs on leash who was considering the crossing and went ahead and did it even though the dogs were pulling here pretty hard. I said, okay if she can do it I can so I got across with dry feet.
Soon after crossing I started deadheading to the cache. No trail so I was going around thorns and such. Found me this old turtle shell.
And a skull of some unlucky critter.
I got to ground zero which was almost on the lake. It looks like one could take a kayak almost all the way there. In fact almost all the previous finders used a kayak but had to beach it in marshy areas and get all muddy coming in.
I looked for the cache for an hour. I was envisioning something big like an ammo box. I was convinced that the cache had gone missing. “Muggled” they say in the geocaching world. I looked for it for an hour or so and couldn’t find it. I had marked ground zero with my blue water bottle and when I gave up looking for the cache well then I couldn’t find my bottle. So I had to hunt for the water bottle and when I found it, I saw the cache. Which is why I marked the zero point with my bottle. I could have saved an hour, oh well.
The thing is that the cache container’s top had been chewed by some critter and the container was level full of water. So I obviously could not sign the log. I’m still claiming it! I logged the find online and cache owner got back with me and said that they would replace the container.
So then I hiked out. Since I wanted to circumnavigate the lake I had to take the long way out. It was a mile and a half to the cache site and I hike almost two and a half miles to get back out. A good time was had by all is my motto.
Things change fast around here in northeast Oklahoma. Just a few days ago it was freezing and we had snow on the ground.
And then it warmed up! Way past my sweet spot. My sweet spot in the winter is in the 40’s. It keeps the snakes brumating and the ticks and chiggers at bay.
So it has been pleasant the past few days.
On Valentines Day Heather and I spent the afternoon together. We toured Philbrook Museums galleries and gardens, lunched at the tony Utica Square shopping center and then shopped at Trader Joe’s.
Today, son Logan and I hiked two miles and change on Tulsa’s Turkey Mountain. It was glorious.
I saw this strange double bent tree. My bet is that it is haunted. Turkey Mountain has a long history of outlaws, moonshiners, fourtune hunters, drug labbers, railroaders, ranchers, and worst of all oilfield workers (aka oilfield trash.) So yeah, there is a lot of haunting going on.
They are busy at even more things to play on the mountain. We chatted with the guy building this thing. He and his 87 year grandfather are working on it. It’s going to be for mountain bikers. It looks like a crappy way to die to me.
We’ve had a warm spell lately and life is glorious now. I can fly my drone without it going all “Danger Will Robinson” on me.
We have had a contractor replacing our backyard fence in something besides a rainy/snowy/icy windstorm.
I was able to go hiking without risking hypothermia.
And I went on a long bike ride Monday along the Arkansas River. It was crowded, every old retired guy in town had the same idea and were out cruising the river in their cargo shorts.
For whatever reasons I haven’t been out much since the first part of this month. Too cold, too rainy, blah blah blah. I’ve got lots of excuses.
The above is a tree in my backyard. We are still waiting on a new fence. I’ve paid the guy a deposit now we just need it to stop raining.
This photo and the two following are of Tulsa’s Own Park just northwest of downtown Tulsa. I think it may be Tulsa’s oldest park. It has fallen by the wayside. The city keeps the grass mowed, picks up litter, and chases off vagrants and such but it has been abandoned to the neighborhood and they seem to love it.
It is such an old place and feels settled in. And over the years their have been lots of geocaches planted there so I was there in December hunting down a couple of new ones.
And I love the pond. It is home to quite a menagerie of waterfowl. I think many of them are escaped or released pets.
This is a re-edit (all the photos in the post are re-edits) of a shot I took during out trip in December to Colorado Springs. We drove through the Oklahoma panhandle. You can see forever out there. I found the big sky and lonely highway exhilarating.
This is a tree on a hilltop at Tulsa’s Bales Park from a hike I took a year ago. (Another re-edit.) It was a dark, cold day and I had the place to myself. You cannot really tell from the photo but the hill in the background is the Turkey Mountain Urban Wilderness Area. Between Bales Park and Turkey Mountain is a four lane limited access highway, US 75.
Speaking of Turkey Mountain this is re-edited photo of some sort of bicycle obstacle built there by volunteers. Back in the day, Turkey Mountain was pretty wild. The powers that be lightly administered it. They certainly didn’t build and maintain sustainable trails like they do now. So people, especially the bicyclists, would haul in lumber and build their own features. All over the place. Most of it was pretty rickety. It was wonder nobody died. At least I don’t think anybody died. If they did, I think the other bikers might have just dug a shallow hole, dragged the pour soul into it, covered them up, toasted him or her with a beer and kept on keeping on. Snitches get stitches is their motto.
