Tag Archives: Geocaching

Twenty Four Hours in Osage County

Those of you who know me, know that I’m a Geocacher. The Tulsa Area Geocachers have an annual event in the Fall that they have at various State Parks in Oklahoma and this year they went to one of my favorite spots in Oklahoma, Osage Hills State Park up in Osage County. It is a beautiful wooded, hilly location with lots of camping spots and a friendly accommodating staff.

Heather and Logan stayed home. They hate geocaching. Hate might be too mild a word for their feelings about it. So I went by myself.

So it was fun finding the various temporary caches placed by the participants. Some of the people are diabolically clever.

Osage Hills is known for having the remnants of a Civilian Conservation Commission camp built back in the 1930’s to house young men who helped build the facilities still used at the park.

Here is a link to an interesting short blog post about the history of the CCC at Osage Hills. I learned that the camp was active from 1935 to 1941. Its amazing that so much remains 75 years after the camp ceased operation.

Mainly I wandered the trails. I didn’t encounter many other geocachers as I started with the furthest removed caches and worked back and was more interested in taking pictures anyway.

I found the camp dynamite hut. It looks solid enough still, except for the roof.

I loved Lookout Lake. No geocachers here, just fishermen.

Found me a little critter. He told me he wasn’t a geocache.

The next day I got up early and went out to Sand Creek to take some photos. One of the prettist places in the state as far as I am concerned.

And then I drove out to the nearby Nature Conservancy’s Tallgrass Prairie Preserve. I always love the wide open spaces with rolling hills and the bison.

I’ve never been able to photograph the feeling of exapanse of this place. It is almost 40,000 acres.

It is huge and goes on forever.

And then I drove down to Woolaroc, Frank Phillips’ (of Phillips Petroleum) country place. Woolaroc is an acronym for “Woods, Lakes,and Rocks”. He has a first class western art museum, a buffalo herd, and all sorts of other stuff that an oil gazillionaire needs.

And a barn for the the critters. I love the barn.

And the landscaping (rockscaping).

And the Native American design motif. I know its cultural misappropriation but I still like it.

And then I went home. But I had a great time.

Weekend Update

Too Early!!!! We saw this last night in a department store. ugh

Heather and I ate at a new brew pub in town Elgin Park in the Brady District. Oklahoma is slowly digging out of the dungeon of liquor laws in the country. Brew pubs are one benefit. It was just the two of us and we ordered a medium pizza. That is the biggest medium pizza I have ever seen.

After the beer and pizza we went down to the river and walked (I actually waddled) a few yards and encountered these ladies doing an exercise class with drum sticks. I think Heather said it is called “Pound.” It looked very high impact. We got exhausted sitting on the picnic table just watching them. Heather is taking a class all day Sunday on how to be a BollyX instructor. What happened to jumping jacks and pushups is what I say. We took a water exercise class together Friday at our gym. It was fun!

Earlier Saturday I went for a run on the river. I’m trying to get ready for the Tulsa Run 15K in the end of October and I’m trying to not to aggravate a sore knee. Poor me. This is what I call hidden cove on the river. I think it is actually a boat ramp for the police and fire department. Nobody seems to know about it but me, and now you. Don’t tell, okay? Oh by the way, across the river there is my much beloved Turkey Mountain.

And speaking of not noticing. I have been running the Tulsa River Trails for 24 years now and yesterday and just noticed this for the first time near the rugby fields. I swear I have never seen this thing before. What’s up, with me? It looks kind of amateurish and not some early day remnant to me.

And hey, we had a Harvest Moon this week. Woopee. And a lunar eclipse. I didn’t bother to stay up and see it.

And our refurbished library which has been undergoing a renovation for three years is going to open at the end of September. Meanwhile it has a brand new Starbucks that has opened early. Supposedly it is the first Starbucks in a public library in the US. That’s great, what would be greater would be a locally owned coffee shop.

I went to Philbrook last week. Lots of people there so I took some photos.

I also went geocaching in Mohawk Park one day last week. I love these old picnic pavilions.

I only looked for and found one geocache. This one kind of had a geobeacon leading me to it. I think I had some sort of divine guidance on where it was located.

Anyway, that is it.

Beach Blogging 2016 – Pokemon Go Edition

We are still at the beach having a great time walking, running, sitting in the sun and reading, going out to eat and drink and all that good stuff.

This year we have something new, Pokemon Go. The whole family is playing it including Heather. It is kind of fun. I’m getting a hoot on facebook and the news how some are deriding a game that haven’t even played and others talking about the great health benefits. Yadda yadda yadda I say. What matters is if it is fun. Of course some things need to be addressed such as removing the little pokemons from private property and other inappropriate places, but the game is fun.

Here is one of the little critters just before I captured him. Don’t knock it before you try it folks. One thing that helps is having a youngster to explain things.

Meanwhile I’m also geocaching. I can do both in my mind. Apparently there are a bunch of pokemon on Turkey Mountain. I have found almost all the full size regular caches up there and am looking forward to Pokemon Going. Make fun of me if you must. I’ll be feeling sorry for you.

Till next time folks

Multitasking – Geocaching with some Hill Training

Son Logan rocking the hat and Star Wars shirt.

Part of geocaching is that if you place a cache then you are responsible for it and if it goes missing you have to replace it. I have such a cache called “Little Haikey Creek” located in south Tulsa right in the middle of a giant freeway exchange. I’ve had it for years and hardly anybody ever looks for it because it is a long walk from the nearest parking areas.

So off we went on the Mingo trail that winds through the freeway interchange.

The highest part of the freeway exchange goes right by the Mingo Trail and the resulting hill is popular with runners who want to do hill repeats. Hill repeats are where you keep going up and down hills, repeatedly. It is kind of like hitting your head with a hammer repeatedly, except hill repeats are good for you. Supposedly, anyway Logan and I decided to run up and down the hill just for the fun of it. Really we just walked. But I’m calling it a run. What do you know? You weren’t there.

So anyway we got to ground zero (that is geocacher lingo, for the place where the cache is supposed to be) and placed a new one. Somewhere in the woods above. Then we headed back.

We passed a homeless guys place. This kind of puzzled me. Most homeless guys camp near where they can get food and water. This place is a long hike for either. Oh well.

On the way back, we ran up the hill again!! Just for the heck of it.

There he goes down the hill. I like how he is holding his hat like a cowboy holds his cowboy hat. Logan is a native Okie you know.

And then a cyclist came by and went up the hill by diagonal. No way that Alan Bates could do that.

Anyways a good time was had by all. The cache was replaced, we got some fresh air and exercise and a lot of fun. Logan still hates geocaching but he is starting to run/walk with me a little bit and I’m loving that.

What have you been up to lately?

The Morning before the Day Of….

Somewhere around here, a geocache was found.

Friday was my day off. It had been a while since I had my day off because I worked my last day off. I didn’t mind, I made the most of it and I’ll tell you about it because I made a “field trip” to meet with a customer and I took some pictures of some amazing technology that my employer uses but I need to clear the pics I took with my employer before I show you. So we’ll see what happens.

But I get distracted easy. This day off, I got to take it off. First on the agenda was taking the kid to school and then next was a dental appointment… at 9:30. Wow, almost tow hours between when I drop the kid off and and when I have to go to the dentist…. Hmmm, I have time to go to Turkey Mountain and walk around (I don’t want to run because I like my dentist and his staff, and I don’t want to run, and sweat, and stink up the place.) So I will walk, I will hike, I will shop up at his office smelling sweet. I might be dirty and bloody, that has happened, but at least I won’t stink. My experience has shown that blood doesn’t bother people as much as smell does. Do you agree?

I found this one last year.

So I went to Turkey Mountain and walked a couple of miles and found a couple of geocaches.

Little miss blue eyes. I found her on Turkey Mountain last year on private land that is now posted “No Trespassing” I left her there and I haven’t been back. I respect private private property and observe no trespassing notifications. She is still up there though, waiting for you.

And I get my head screwed on straight. And set me up for a good day. And a good day it was.

The approach on the Yellow Trail to the main parking lot on Turkey Mountain.

And a good day it was. I’ll tell you about it…

Let me see, Oh yes, I found two geocaches,
And I had no cavities!!! (I haven’t had a cavity in decades, literally! and I don’t floss, ever)
Heather has a contractor doing some work on the house, mainly on Logan’s bathroom, we went to Lowe’s and got him a first class commode, a veritable throne. The best commode in the house, the best we ever had. We also fetched some lighting and other items. I mean who is working for whom here?
I don’t mind, he is not the cheapest guy in town but he does a good job and treats us right.

And then Heather and I snuck away to “In the Raw” and ate ~~fishbait~~ sushi. That is our newest thing together. We have been trying all the sushi places in town. It is a whole new world to us.

And then Friday evening, Heather went to a Zumba master class and Logan and I went on a three mile walk around Lafortune Park. By the time I went to bed on Friday night I had almost 21,000 fitbit steps and I was tired.

And it all started with a little walk in the woods.

What have you been up to?

Our World Tuesday – Checking Out Chandler Park

Sunday I decided to explore a new area with Logan. It is the land west west of Chandler Park is far northwest Tulsa. I was inspired by the facebook posts of TrailZombie Ken who is my guide pretty much for anything having to do with trails and trailrunning in Oklahoma.

We start out at the very southwest end of Chandler Park and cross the gate and head down the road. The first thing you run into is this sign. This is the Compass Industries Landfill EPA Superfund Site. A gazillion dollars was spent cleaning up “…620,000 cubic yards of solid, liquid and sludge wastes, including acids, caustics, solvents and potentially carcinogenic materials” in a former limestone quarry. The cleanup was paid for by the polluters themselves but all that stopped in 1995 and now we taxpayers get to pay for cleanups. I guess because it is unfair to ask the polluters to pay the expenses. It might cut into their campaign contributions budget or something.

We go a little further and we find the that the fence has been breached in a major way. I wonder what kind of morons trespass out there on a regular basis?

Shortly thereafter the trail gets away from the site and continues on west. We only saw one other person during our outing. Turkey Mountain is great but on nice weekends some of the main trails get crowded and Logan doesn’t like the constant bikers coming up behind us. No traffic problems at Chandler Park, yet.

And then it got a little rocky and I spent 40 fruitless minutes looking for a geocache and we continued our trek until the trail looped around to Avery drive.

We took a little break and then decided to head back on a different route.

If it looks steep, it is.

Just ask Logan, he’ll tell you.

We got into some of rock formations that make Chandler popular with the local bouldering and climbing enthusiasts. We are not into any of that.

Logan took a picture of the old man in full nerd regalia standing on a rock.

So it was a nice easy out and back introduction. I can see when daylight savings time returns that I’ll be coming out here some to do my Wednesday night runs. The area is lots bigger than Turkey Mountain but literally about 1% as many people. I’ll be learning the trails and looking forward to it.

Timely column today in the Tulsa World: Do we even need Chandler Park? I say yes!!

Have you been anywhere new lately?

Linking with Our World Tuesday

Lunchtime Geocaching – Walking in the Woods looking for Tupperware

A bare hint of a trail at West Highlands Park

Fall has definitely come to Tulsa and we are in a period of gorgeous days with sunshine and blue skies. And with the brush, bugs, and snakes gone I am back in the woods finding the larger geocaches. Once or twice a week I take off at lunch to go find one or two. Early in the week I went to west Tulsa’s West Highlands Park to find one hidden deep in the woods in an undeveloped area of the park. Previous finders had reported a lot of difficult bushwhacking. I’m lazy and I had my work clothes on and wasn’t interested in getting all tangled up in the brush, thorns, and mud so I spent a considerable amount of time looking for a trail headed to the cache. It wasn’t a regular park maintained trail. It is what land managers call a “social trail” and you are liable to find anything on such a thing. It is best to keep an eye on what is going on because it is possible to walk into something you don’t really want to walk into. Check out geocaching.com to learn more about geocaching or my link at the end of this post.

Sure enough about 100 feet into the woods I find a collection and porno mags and some whiskey bottles. Sometimes I wish I had a trash bag with me (and a really really good pair of gloves!). I’ve brought along trash bags and it works out well. You pick this crap up and and drop it into a trash bin at the park parking lot. I hate it when people leave trash in public areas.

A few hundred feet further and I came upon an old squatter’s camp that was no longer active. They had left a bright green Dollar store shopping cart. That puzzled me because you would basically have to carry that thing through the woods to their camp. I mean if you have that much energy why don’t you get a job, earn some money, and get an apartment?

Soon after, I left all signs of squatters and came upon signs of nature. Some busy little beaver got after this tree.

I found the cache, as a courtesy to the Cache Owner and the people looking for it I am not showing where I found it. If you want to go look for it, it is named “TAG CITO 2014 Commemorative Cache – West Highlands.” It was a fun one to find.

At lunch on Friday I drove out west to Keystone Dam to look for a couple of caches.

I wasn’t really familiar with the area and ended up on this old road on the south side of the Arkansas River downriver from the dam. A road like this demands to be driven to the very end and I did. So then I looped back and got to business at hand.

I saw an eagle take off from the top of these trees near the “Ground Zero” of the Bomb Squad Cache.

The first one I went after was close to the dam and was named Blue Blazes after the trail that goes by it. This is on Army Corps of Engineers managed land and there was no signs of squatters or porn parties. Just me, the trail, and the woods.

Then I went to the other side of the dam and took a short hike along the north bank of the river and found the Bomb Squad Cache so named because the cache owner originally placed the cache too close to a post office and the police bomb squad came in and looked at it. They didn’t go stupid though. They left a note asking him to move it somewhere else and he did deep in the woods, and I’m glad he did.

Anyways I love walking in the woods this time of year on a bright sunshiny days. What about you, have you ever been geocaching?

Geocaching 101

Geocaching, Saying Goodbye to the Kid, and the Dallas Cowboys get a Win

Saturday I dropped the kid off at his school for rehearsals for a one act play that he has a part in. He is a little busy these days. We suspended horseback riding for a while because of the rehearsals and he is missing his improv comedy workshop on Saturday. It is nice for him to be busy. Speaking of busy I went to Walmart after I dropped Logan off and got some stuff for making geocaches. I have three that have gone missing (“Muggled” is the term we nerds use) so I have to replace them plus I wanted to place one at the Tulsa Arrow that I found a couple weeks ago. Camo duct tape is a geocachers best friend. The waterproof match containers make great waterproof “microcaches.” The orange box makes for a good geocache container. I’ll use lots and lots of camo duct tape covering up the orange. The hot wheels are for trade trinkets in the caches in case you bring kids along. And I love Altoids and the empty tins are good cache containers if you can keep them out of the weather because they are not waterproof.

So after Walmart I buzzed downtown and replaced a geocache “Boys Night Out Downtown” that Logan and I placed in 2010 and has been found about 249 times and muggled five times. It is in a spot that homeless people find to be a great overnight sleeping area. By the time I got the thing camo taped and placed I got a text from the kid to come pick him up and then we drove up to north Tulsa’s Reservoir Hill to place the new cache.

It took us a while to find a good spot. I want it to be far away from houses and nowhere close to the City of Tulsa water infrastructure that is also there. I found a good spot, maybe too good. I placed the cache and it promptly disappeared from view so I suggested on the cache page that you bring gloves. So anyway here is the cache page for Tulsa Arrow. I wrote it up on Saturday and it got approved on Sunday.

On Sunday we packed Logan up and took him to school to catch a bus for the Senior Trip. They bused the kids down to TAhlequah, Oklahoma and are going rafting Monday morning on the Illinois River. So Heather and I are childless for about 24 hours. We kind of miss the kid actually but he’ll be back by the time I get home from work. He is really having a good year at school this year. He is taking drama and choir and he loves those classes.

So Heather and I didn’t feel like going out to eat so we went to the local sprouts store to pick up some Salmon. I am a fan of exotic tasting chips and so I found the these pumpkin spiced chips. They are okay but overly sweet and they have no salt. If they had left the salt in, I’d be buying a case of them. They do have a satisfying crunch to them.

Yep, I’m posting this photo again.

And speaking of satisfying the Dallas Cowboys beat the Philadelphia Eagles in Philly with the help of my two friends above. The Eagles didn’t play very well and Dallas had 18 penalties. Might be the last win for the Cowboys in a while. Tony Romo broke his clavicle and it looks like Dez Bryant is going to be out for a couple months with his broken foot.

Oh well, that was what happened this weekend. What about you?

(Bad) Judgement Day on Turkey Mountain

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.

Here is my route. Slow and sloppy was the mode.

Continue reading →

Running and Geocaching along the Turnpike

Yesterday evening I didn’t make it out to Turkey Mountain after work to run with the TATUR group. I was on the wrong side of town you see because it is almost tax time and I had to go pick up the return and see how much extra damage I was having to pay over and above what we’ve already paid.

You see I just get totally confused on who to vote for because well you know Obama likes to give my money to his friends, the poor people and almost all Republicans like to give my money to their friends, the rick people. Now Hillary, she’s different, she doesn’t have any friends so she’ll just keep my money. Stuff like that makes life a lot simpler is what I say. Besides if she gets elected she’ll have to buy a new email server. I think a President who can set up their own server is pretty cool. What do you think.

Well, I’m sorry I hadn’t even begun my post and I’m already off topic, way off topic. So since I couldn’t make it in time to run Turkey Mountain I went to Tulsa’s Hunter Park and started off trying to find a few caches there and then since it is connected to the Creek Turnpike trail I took off on that trying to find a few. I think I looked for about a half dozen or so and found about two.

I am not very good about finding micro caches and some of these hides are pretty darn clever. I have come to terms with myself about not finding many of the clever hides. The point is getting out and about and trying.

So I had a pretty good run. If you click on the thingy above and get it going you can see how I was searching in places and then moving on. At the end I forgot tot turn off my watch so that is what the last mile or so is fast.

Do you have fitbit? One of those little devices that tracks your steps. This is my fitbit reading for yesterday. I got in about 15,000 steps which is over seven miles. You can see that I have a pretty sedentary job and then I go walking at lunch and then how I got moving once I got out caching and then how slow I was when I got home and plopped myself down in front of the television.

What about you? What was your big adventure yesterday (or whenever?)

YogisDen.us

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