I was at Tulsa Philbrook Museum Gardens checking out the fall foliage when I noticed some crystal balls hanging in one of the trees. So I went to check them out.l
They had hung all these balls in the lower branches. I loved them. I think they are for the Christmas holidays.
I had my lensball with me so I made a crystal photo of a crystal. I love garden decorations.
I’m linking with Weekend Reflections. Come check it out!
One of my hobbies is geocaching which involves finding stuff out in the world using a GPS receiver or an app on a smart phone. I’ve been doing it a long time and love it. (Check geocaching.com for more information.) One of the newer types of geocaches is Adventure Labs. I’ve done several of those. One I did recently was an animal sculpture themed geocache in the town of Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. I had to navigate to the sculptures and find out some information about each one. The technology utilized includes an electronic fence which means that I had actually had to go rather than sit in my easy chair and google to find out the information.
Anyway, its lots of fun and I found out new stuff. For example, downtown Broken Arrow has a life sized installation of a mouse. It’s on a windowsill. Why? I have no idea but its there. I love finding out new things in areas where I live and travel.
I’m linking with Mosaic Monday. Come join in!!
Friday, my wife and I were in a parking lot and came across this bright spot. I was like, What!!
Somebody had an Arkansas Razorbacks plate and it reflected perfectly on the ground. I love it.
I’m helping take care of a monarch way station on Turkey mountain. The stake fence makes for some nice shadows.
I get bored while watering so I made a time lapse video of it.
And the other day while hiking on Turkey Mountain I came across a family of deer grazing including this one coming out of the shadows. I am glad the deer are returning. The mountain has become really popular but the hub bub has died down a little bit and the deer are coming back.
I’m linking with Magical Mystery Teacher’s Shadow Shot Sunday 2. Come join in.
The tempietto at Philbrook has to be the most photographed thing in town. I’ve taken a bunch myself. Back when the Waite Phillips family lived here way back when, the pond was a swimming pool and supposedly there was a changing room underneath the tempietto.
The pond makes for some nice reflections.
I love all the flowers at Philbrook.
On another water body, Crow Creek, which winds through the property, there are lots of turtles.
And another flowers.
An invitation to look for a stone flower.
There it is!!
Stumbled upon the secret garden. The restaurant at Philbrook uses it for growing herbs and such.
It was too early to catch the change of color in the trees. Almost as good is this installation. “Oklahoma Autumn” by Eric Baker. It’s my favorite sculpture in the garden. There are two other pieces of this off to the right.
They got a lot of stuff in the 25 acres of gardens. Over 1200 trees and fifteen sculptures. I wonder if somebody is in charge of the tree count?
I’m linking with Our World Tuesday. Give it a try!
We drove home last Saturday from our vacation on the Gulf Coast. My wife and I shared the driving duties and so she drove the middle third of the distance, much of it in the delta country of Mississippi and Arkansas. There was lots of weather during much of the drive especially early on in Alabama. The rest of the time we dodged the rain and got see some great clouds.
So Heather drove and I snapped pics of the sky and country. The above two are in Mississippi.
I snapped this as we crossed the Mississippi River.
And this was in Arkansas.
And so was this. I am not sure just where but I really liked it. And no, we didn’t drive into that storm. I’m not sure where it went.
And this is Oklahoma. I was driving and I confess I took the photo while driving. Lock me up officer, throw away the key!!!
Anyway we got back safe and sound from a great vacation.
I hope that everybody is being safe, while also enjoying life. Please find that balance.
Come join the fun at Skywatch Friday
Saturday afternoon, Heather and I ventured downtown to the Tulsa Performing Arts Center and watched “Escape to Margaritaville” a touring Broadway production featuring the music of Jimmy Buffett in a musical with a romantic comedy production. It was a lot of fun listening the tunes. It turns out that other people can sing Buffett tunes besides Jimmy.
It was a lot of fun. Here is the schedule. They are going all over the country. Sioux Falls, South Dakota is next.
The Performing Arts Center in Tulsa required all attendees to wear masks and it looked to me like everybody was complying.
We had some nice skies for part of the week. I think they were offshoots of Hurricane Ida. The victims of the storm are in my thoughts. So many people had to leave their homes. It’s going to be a long time before they get the electricity turned on. The storm continued up to the east coast causing flooding and tornadoes. What a miserable storm Ida was.
I went looking for a geocache. The spoiler is that I didn’t find it but I found something else. I was looking at the these cottonwood trees and it looked kind of funny.
It’s hard to see it in this photo but there is a trail that starts out and goes down to the Arkansas River. I was checking it out and a guy with a fishing rod came by and we chatted a bit. For a minute I thought it was Jimmy John Shark. Apparently you walk down the trail to the river, wade across part of the river and climb up on a sandbar and right there is a big hole that he says is full of catfish. You learn something new every day. I tried explaining geocaching to him and I could kind of tell the young man was worried about me. He was wondering if I was right in my head.
I wasn’t fishing, I was geocaching and the cache was hidden in the rip rap. I clambered around looking in all the nooks and crannies and couldn’t find it. Apparently nobody else could either. I got an email from the owners who said that they checked and it was missing and they are going to replace it soon.
On the way out I passed a tube bending company in an industrial area. They built this thing to show off their craft. Tube bending is useful in making chemical and refinery processing equipment, especially heaters and such. Tulsa has a lot of oilfield manufacturing companies and expertise.
The next day I went on a bike ride on the RiverParks trails along the Arkansas River here in Tulsa. I stopped to check out the construction of the new low water dam and pedestrian bridge. I think that it is going to be another two years or so before they are done. I’m looking forward to it. Click here for a look at the conceptual design.
And finished up at what I call the Bear Fountain near where I parked my care. The temp was in the low 90’s F but the heat index was about a 105 F. Time to go get cooled off. I was going to go geocaching again but didn’t want to get back out in the heat.
I am linking with Skywatch Friday – come join in!!
One day earlier this month my friend Tom asked if I wanted to go see Union Pacific’s Big Boy locomotive. It was on a ten state tour and was going through Oklahoma on August 12. So the next day Tom and I went up to the little town of Vinita where the Big Boy was scheduled to appear.
Turns out about half the population of Oklahoma was there as well. Train fans of all ages were there. It’s nice to see that people still get all excited about trains.
The locomotive pulling this train is special. It is the biggest and most powerful operating steam locomotive in the world. With its tender, it weighs 1,951,000 pounds, it is 133 feet long and over sixteen feet tall. Twenty five of these monsters were built during World War II to pull freight trains over the Wasatch Mountains of Utah.
They were in service up until 1959 when they were replaced by cheaper to run diesel locomotives. There are only eight left. Seven are static displays in museums. The one we saw, number 4014 is the only one operational. Union Pacific reacquired it in 2019 and brought it back to working condition. The originals burned coal, 4014 is converted to burning used motor oil. It is used for promotional purposes by UP now.
It is very impressive and very loud and everybody was excited to see it including me.
It is still on tour, so you can still see it if you wish. They are touring ten states and it ends September 7 at UP’s station in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Check here for details on the schedule and stops.
Hey everybody else was getting a selfie why not me?
It stayed in Vinita for an hour or so while the crews fussed over the locomotive adjusting this and that and asking hundreds of questions.
The crew and the other UP employees were obviously proud of the engine. I was proud also. I worked for an oil and gas subsidiary of UP back in the late 70’s and early 80’s. They didn’t let me near a train but I still get their yearly train calendar.
And then it came time for it to go to the next stop.
There goes almost two million pounds of steel.
Tom and I got a few miles ahead of it so we could capture some motion. Locomotives are all about motion.
And so that was a good day back earlier this month.
I am linking with Our World Tuesday. Check it out!!
Here are some other good links
I have a mish-mash this week. Many of the photos are from my Go Pro Clone so the quality is not that great. I set it to take a photo every ten seconds during my bike rides so I get hundreds of photos and keep only a few per ride.
I went riding on the Arkansas River Trails her in Tulsa. They have this huge flag at 61st street and I love it when the breeze makes it fly full. That happens a lot here in Oklahoma. Are you familiar with the musical Oklahoma! you may remember:
“where the wind comes sweepin’ down the plain. And the wavin’ wheat can sure smell sweet. When the wind comes right behind the rain.”
The wind blows here all the time, rain or no rain, wheat or no wheat.
School is starting and so not very many people on the trails except old retired guys and moms with their babies.
I always feel like I am in a cage going across this bridge. If I see somebody coming I stop and let them come across. After my head on bike collision last year, I know the unthinkable can happen.
Went past one of the two Holly Frontier refineries here in Tulsa. I’m a chemical engineer by training and so I love the TST’s and LRO’s. (Tall Shiny Things and Large Round Objects). So you are now a chemical engineer also!!
Hey, here is a decent photo. I went on another trail south of Tulsa the other day. Only about 10 miles round trip but that is a decent length for me.
The same trail went across a revamped pedestrian bridge. It was so cool and up to date. I read that “Love Locks” are a pain for many places but here they have designed a couple Love Lock stations. I love responsive stuff like that.
They had seating and covered areas and built in musical instruments for kids. I thought the whole thing was marvelous.
Later I went to Mad Dog Liquors in east Tulsa. In addition to being a liquor store it is a graffiti permission zone. The liquor store part of it seems to be closed (again) but that doesn’t stop the taggers. I love this work. If you look closely you can see it has a pipeline motif. I am trained as a chemical engineer but I spent a bunch of my career designing, building, operating, and doing commercial things with natural gas pipelines. You know what they say, “Nothing finer than a pipeliner.” Actually only pipeliners say that. That doesn’t mean its not true though, right?
And so time to end this mish mash mess. I’m linking it up with Skywatch Friday
Big News out today in Tulsa for those of us who love the Turkey Mountain Urban Wilderness Area. The RiverParks Authority has announced that it is beginning the first phase of the Turkey Mountain Master Plan. Construction on thirteen miles of trail will begin this Fall. The trails are being designed by Progressive Trail Design who designs and build trails all over the country.
This is huge news for Tulsa. Six years ago a company announced plans to build an outlet mall on the mountain. It seemed like an unstoppable force but a small group of citizens (the Tulsa Urban Wilderness Coalition) organized opposition to the outlet mall and guess what, the mall decided to go somewhere else in town. And further, that somewhere else, the company scraped off a bunch of dirt and started construction and then quit (they say only temporarily) leaving kind of a big muddy mess. (Thank goodness they didn’t do that on Turkey Mountain is what I say.)
Two years ago the RiverParks Authority got funding to develop a master plan. As part of the process input was provided by thousands of Tulsans on what they wanted Turkey Mountain to look like. What they came up with was wonderful. Check it out here. A great plan but an unfunded plan.
So now they have enough funding for the design and construction of thirteen miles of trail. Professionally designed trail rather than overgrown deer trails.
The existing trails on Turkey, although we love them were not designed. They just kind of happened. We have trails that go straight up hillsides and those trails are eroded rocky boulder fields now. The trails are not sustainable and get very muddy after rains where the water puddles up.
The new trails will be more accessible to a wider population segment. I’m pretty comfortable on Turkey Mountain now but it took me years to get that way. I know which trails are almost impossible to traverse. As new trails are built, many of the older trails are going to blocked off and retired to let the land rest. All this is exciting news.
Want to learn more? Listen to the Official Turkey Mountain podcast. Ryan Howell of the RiverParks Authority talks about the problems with the existing trails and the promise of the new. He also talked about restoring the bulk of Turkey Mountain to an Oak Savanna via the use of prescribed burns and removal of non-native species. He also discusses the history of Turkey Mountain including tales of buried gold and Viking explorers.
Consider joining the Tulsa Urban Wilderness Coalition. It’s a nominal cost and you will find out about work days, which are a lot of fun. TUWC’s scope is all the urban wilderness spaces in Tulsa, not just Turkey Mountain. They have become a resource for other organizations in the Tulsa area. (Full disclosure, I am am member, and all opinions on this blog are my own.) Check out and like their facebook page.
If you are on instagram follow the Turkey Mountain account. (more full disclosure, I post photos to that account once or twice a week.)
Follow the Turkey Mountain Facebook Account and their Public Trail User Forum also on facebook.
Monarch Way Station on Turkey Mountain built last year as part of Monarchs on the Mountain event last year. The event will be be September 17 to 19 this year. Check out their web page for the details.
You can only legally camp one night a year on Turkey Mountain during an event called Base Camp. It is a fun camping and music festival. This year on October 2 and 3.
It is exciting to see the results of a small group of people who stood up to big corporations and City Hall and won. (Just to be clear, I was not one of those people, but I was cheering them on.)
Linking with Our World Tuesday