I’ve been riding my bicycle more these days. I try and start in the morning to beat the 100+F heat we have been having (and are going to have for the foreseeable future.) I only go about 15 miles or so. This fountain is my turnaround spot to head back. I don’t rest at the fountain; I rest in the shade of a tree.
Stay cool everybody, find some shade.
I’m linking with ShadowShot Sunday 2. Nice posts over there.
I went hiking earlier this week on Turkey Mountain here in Tulsa. I came across this tiny frog traversing the trail.
I also went for a bike ride and took my camera with me again. As I was going down the trail I spotted a bald eagle flying high over me but headed down to the river. So I pulled out and spotted this guy fishing. That’s two weeks in a row I’ve seen a bald eagle in approximately the same location. Sorry for the fuzzy photo. I was at the far end of the range of my Canon Superzoom.
I also found this egret, or white heron or something several miles north of the Eagle out in the river looking for lunch.
And white pelicans on a sandbar.
And a log with two pairs of turtles. I didn’t know that momma turtles gave baby turtles piggy back (turtle back?) rides.
And a great blue heron. Again at pretty good range. They are skittish!!
That’s it for this week. I am linking with Eileen’s Saturday’s Critters. Lots of really good posts there. Check it out.
We had a break the other day with unrelenting heat and cloudless skies so I launched my drone from the back yard. These were rainless clouds but hey they shaded us a little bit. This is looking northeast from about 50 meters high.
And looking straight west. Not a drop of rain in them.
I went downtown for some reason and ended up going by the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church across the freeway from downtown. I love the domes that are on the Orthodox churches.
And just down the street is Tulsa Fire Station 4 which is located right on Route 66 as it goes through town. They had a spiffy new (to me) Route 66 sign that I thought was cool. I posted it on Instagram and on a facebook Route 66 sign. Somebody from out of state asked if that was the only Tulsa fire station on Route 66. So I checked and no, there is one other Tulsa Station Fire Station.
Tulsa Fire Station 66, way out in city limits but in the country on Route 66. They call themselves “The Keepers of the Mother Road.” I thought I knew all the Tulsa US 66 attractions and no I didn’t. Check out their facebook page. They like people to come by and visit if they are not doing anything and host all sorts of school and other groups.
One of the things I do is water the monarch waystation on Tulsa’s Turkey Mountain. I went up there Wednesday morning and it had rained!! Not much of a rain but it soaked the parking lot. I didn’t feel much like watering after it rained plus the park had a contractor there laying down sod and I felt that they would probably be wanting to use the water tap and hose that I would be using so I just plugged and abandoned the project (oilfield lingo for giving up) and decided to go hiking. I’ll be back in a few days.
I went by one of the small lakes on Turkey Mountain on my hike. Something about skies and woods reflected on water really attracts me.
Earlier this week I went on another bike ride on the RiverParks trails. I stopped and inspected the progress on the new pedestrian bridge and dam. Going pretty darn slow is what I think but I got a shot of the crane.
And this is a photo from NASA from the new James Webb telescope that is taking some spectacular images of space. Click on the photo and you’ll get a description of what you are looking at. I’m still in the stage of just looking at the imagery, the text dulls the mind. (Sorry). They are letting everybody use the pics under a liberal creative commons license. Awesomeness is what I think.
I’m linking with Skywatch Friday
In 2016 the Tulsa based George Kaiser Family Foundation purchased Bob Dylan’s archives from him and several years later opened up the Bob Dylan Center in the Arts District just north of Downtown Tulsa. I visited it recently.
The archive consists of over 100,000 items. Everything from clothes, to piano frames, to manuscripts, art works, music recordings, diaries, all sorts of records. Dylan was some sort of pack rat it appears and now his collection is in a place where it can be cataloged, preserved, and put on display.
The center starts with Bobby Zimmerman from Hibbing, Minnesota and goes on from there through all his various personal permutations and tribulations.
One of the supercool features of the center are these Ipods that are activated at dozens of touchpoints throughout the facility. You can hear interviews, music footage, reviews and all sorts of stuff. I thought these were very nice and worked lots better than similar things I have used at other museums. And it is covered under your admission price.
I’ll have to admit that I was never much of a Dylan fan. He was about half a generation ahead of me and so he and I never synched up except for a few songs.
What I learned about Dylan though was that he was all about the music and not so much about sales. He morphed several times in his career, folk music to rock, to country, to gospel. Sometimes his fans didn’t really want to go with him, he didn’t care, he did what he had to do.
The center picked out several songs and displays in detail the painstaking process that Dylan went through writing and rewriting the songs, sometimes it would take years. The guy put everything he had into his music.
He kept his scribblings as he worked things over and over and changed the songs over time.
They also have many of the costumes he wore over the years in his concerts.
There is a gigantic virtual juke box machine curated by Elvis Costello containing almost every song he ever did, or wrote, or collaborated with somebody else on. Turns out he wrote lots of songs for other performers.
I was there for a couple hours and went over everything twice and listened on the ipod to at list a little bit of dozens of songs and interviews. It was overwhelming. I told me wife about it. She is all about music and now she is all excited about going, so I get to go again!!
He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016 for his body of work. Reading his thoughts about it, it took him a while to understand that. He just couldn’t figure out why a songwriter was deserving of the honor. He accepted it though.
I strongly recommend the center. I loved it. And right down the block is the Woody Guthrie Center. Go check it out. I did a few years ago.
Here is a musical interlude. I told you that I wasn’t much of a fan but I loved Hurricane from 1975’s Blood on the Tracks album.
NASA is making images from their new Webb Telescope available to the public on Flickr and other social media sites under very generous Creative Commons licenses. Talk about spectacular, the images are wonderful, go check them out.
Shadowy cool in the lobby of the former Sun Pipeline Building in downtown Tulsa on a very hot day.
Last Monday I braved the heat for a bike ride on Tulsa’s RiverParks trails bordering the Arkansas River as it flows through town. I took my Canon SuperZoom camera along in a backpack hoping to take some photos.
I found what I think are great egrets. (I’m not a very good birder so if you have better ID I would appreciate it very much.) This one was looking for lunch in the shallow water.
This nearby group seemed more into grooming than eating.
Further down the river I spotted this great blue heron. They are very skittish and so by the time I stopped my bike, and retrieved the camera from the backpack and focused, this guy was ready to leave.
Nearby, this group of pelicans were hanging out together.
I saw something black with a white spot almost clear to the other riverbank. It turns out that it is a bald eagle. The first image of one I have captured in the wild. Sorry about the poor quality but it was at the far range of the camera.
I was pretty happy with my photos. Again, if I have misidentified any of them please let me know.
I’m linking with Eileen’s Saturdays’s Critters.
I went on on another bike ride the other day on Tulsa’s RiverParks trails along the Arkansas River. I took my Canon Superzoom Camera with me. I stopped again at The Gathering Place to check on the new pedestrian bridge and new dam being constructed. Not much progress so I focused on the construction equipment being used.
In the bed of the river they had this huge concrete pump putting concrete around boulders on the riverbed. So it looks like in addition to the bridge and dam maybe they are shaping the river for other purposes. I’ll have to check into that.
There were lots of tracked backhoes at work (I call them track hoes.) This one was actually on the west side of the river doing something not related to the bridge or dam.
Here are several more on the riverbed. The contractors have constructed a huge cofferdam to divert the river flow to the west side of its banks to make room for construction.
And another trackhoe
And yet another. Not too many of them were being operated the day of my ride. I have no idea why. The weather was great.
And this one had a jackhammer type attachment.
As you can tell, I love construction equipment and checking out construction and trying to figure out what they are doing and how they are going about it.
I’m linking with Skywatch Friday. Come check it out.
I went to see my brother Bob here in town the other day. He is staying at a nice place. Lots of things for them to do. I got comped a meal with him. It was excellent.
Desert was bread pudding!! It was right out of the oven.
On July 4th, while I was in bed sleeping. Bob got up and did a mile in the halls of his place in his wheelchair. Six laps, he got this medal to celebrate. Not only was I asleep, I had covid so I couldn’t go cheer him on and take photos.
Last weekend, the Tulsa Urban Wilderness Coalition had a work day on Turkey Mountain. Lots of people showed up to do some really hard work repairing erosion damage and rebuilding jumps and all that heavy work. Kudos to them.
What did I do that day? I watered the butterfly garden.
And took videos of the cottonwood trees shimmering in the breeze.
I also gathered up my loppers, a trash bag, and my 32 oz water container and ventured out onto a lesser used trail picking up litter and lopping limbs that intrude on the trail too much. So I didn’t do the big heavy lifting that others were doing but I was doing what I could.
So for a musical interlude, “American Kids” by Kenny Chesney. A fun summertime song. Enjoy
I was on Tulsa’s Turkey Mountain the other day and came across something I had forgot about. A Human Sundial.
Here is what it looks like
And here is the instructions and the guy who put it together as an Eagle Scout Project.
So, I stepped on the July step, and sure enough, it gave the correct time. Corrected for daylight savings time of course. I remember discovering this years ago and I completely forgot about it. Nice to find stuff like this again.
Kudos to the Eagle Scouts of the World and their multitude of projects.
I’m linking with Shadow Shot Sunday 2 hosted by the Magical Mystery Teacher