We have our first storm of the winter coming. On Ground Hogs Day! Here in Oklahoma we panic at the first thought of ice and snow. Everybody hits the grocery stores for bread and milk.
This is from my backyard weather station. It is remarkable that you can tell to the minute when the front hit. At 8:05 PM last night. The temperature and the humidity dropped like a rock. It is supposed to be sporadic rain/sleet/snow until this evening and then the snow will hit. Our weathercasters live for this stuff. The storm chasers are out and about in their cars driving on the ice, looking for stop signs with icicles flags blowing in the wind. Yep, weather is a major spectator sport in Oklahoma.
El Reno is a gritty suburb west of Oklahoma City. It’s in the center of the wheat belt so there are a lot of grain elevators. It was a Rock Island railroad hub, and an oil and gas operations center as well. Nearby Fort Reno was a cavalry outpost during the wars with Native Americans. And Route 66 runs right through town.
They even have a special place for love-locks.
And it is part of my year long turning 66 on Route 66 celebration.
Here’s LJ our stately elderly, wild eyed cat. Surveying what is going on in the house.
And Lizzie, our plump little lady, has finally learned that the fire feels good. Took her a while. She’s still kind of confused. We don’t typically have the fire during the day but she goes and lays down in front of the fireplace with a look of not understanding why it’s not warm.
Here she is warming up her other side.
And LJ and Lizzie, cheek to cheek so to speak.
And here is a Lizzie Portrait
And poor Abby, she started licking her paws for some reason. Morning, noon, and night. We couldn’t figure it out, took her to the vet and they couldn’t figure it out either. We got her an inflatable cone of shame. I put it on her and she flopped over on her side for a few minutes, I guess out of shame. We kept it on her for a few days and took it off and no more paw licking.
My new trailcam, still messing with it. I have it set so that when it trips it takes a still photo and ten seconds of video. I ended up with hundreds of little videos. Wading through all of them is drudgery.
Most of them were of starlings fighting each other at the suit feeder. I got tired of that really quick.
So I’m still trying to figure it out. I think I’m going to do mainly photos. Lots faster to go through.
Went on another hike on Turkey Mountain this week. Another cold, and to some, unpleasant day. To me, it wasn’t raining and I had the right clothes on so it was a great day.
Turkey Mountain has all sorts of relics from its past life. Near I guess what used to be a farm there is this grizzled old tree wrapped a bunch of times with barbed wire. Ouch!
The wire is holding up this old fence of some sort of chicken wire, hog wire, whatever wire.
And an abandoned cistern nearby.
Moving on to the west I came upon a cleared part of Turkey Mountain. It was cleared by the land owners at the time who were trying to sell the parcel.
They ended up in a contract with an outlet mall developer but that led to a huge fight in the city and the developer left in a huff and cut a deal with a suburb and started building the mall there but then changed their mind and there is now a few slabs, and some structural steel that is rusting away. Turkey Mountain missed a bullet is what I say. Money was donated to by the property from the owners and it is protected now.
Moving on, I was in a tree mood today. I love trees in all seasons. In the winter we get to see their bones.
Headed north to the revamped Y and came across an abandoned oil gathering line. Turkey Mountain used to be a prolific oil field but it played out but there is lots of remnants today. Old pipelines and pumpjack foundations scattered across the landscape, and a few old wellheads.
Getting closer to the Y, their abandoned disc golf course.
And their ropes course. You ever ropes? I think that ropes and other team building exercises are a huge scam. I participated in a bunch of them and I hated all of them.
And then the little lake at the Y where they have kayaks and canoes, fishing, and swimming. Now stuff like that is fun.
And then headed back to the parking lot, another mystery on Turkey Mountain. A deep hole, a homemade ladder and a camouflaged drier vent hose. Meth lab, the hangout of the last Democrat in Oklahoma? Who knows?
And here is my route of about three miles. I started at the very lower right corner, the upper parking lot and went in a clockwise direction and then returned.
And now a bonus sky, one morning’s sunrise with a reflection off my car.
And a drone photo from above my house looking south one evening.
And that is it for this week’s Skywatch post. I am linking with Skywatch Friday come join in!!
Someone close to us got covid and by some miracle, they got right into the emergency room of the leading hospital in Tulsa. They got some great care and will be returning to their home soon. Please be careful folks.
I went for a weekday hike on Turkey Mountain a couple weeks ago. I had the place to myself. I saw two other people in my hour and half and three plus miles. You come on a weekend there are a lot more (unless you know where to go where nobody else is.)
I started down the new trail and then veered off on a small leafy trail paralleling the new one.
I veered back to the new trail to check out this cutout of bigfoot. There is quite a bigfoot culture in Oklahoma!!
I left the new trail and headed west. I came upon a bunch of old cans and rusted pots on the ground and I noticed this pipe hung up in the tree.
It has been there so long that one end is embedded in a tree. It looks to me like a really old camp site. Turkey Mountain has been populated by Native Americans, farmers, ranchers, railway men, oilwell drillers, and supposedly moonshiners and more lately meth labs. Who knows the vintage of this camp!?
A littel further west I came to Pepsi Lake. What are called ponds elsewhere in the world are lakes on Turkey Mountain. Don’t ask me why. Don’t ask me why these Pepsi truck bodies are perched on the Pepsi Lake Dam. The Pepsi Bottling Company is nearby so there might be some sort of connection. So people tell things like that Pepsi put the bodies up there to protect the dam. They don’t know that, they are just guessing. How would that protect a dam anyway.
It does provide shelter for homeless people (not for very long, it is a long walk to civilization from Pepsi Lake. You can tell people have had parties of very sorts at the site.
And there is some decent tagging there. Please though, take your graffiti elsewhere.
It’s a mystery that I haven’t figured out yet.
Another mystery is this thing on the west side of the mountain. Not too many people know about it but I’ve been told it is an old moonshiners camp other people have said outlaws hung out here.
A friend of mine piped up and said he knows an old timer that lives close to the mountain who knew all about it. He said that it’s an old hunting camp. Wow, that’s boring. I’m sticking with old moonshiner’s camp! Who’s with me?
So here is a little map of my travels. I started down at the bottom and went counterclockwise. Like I said I didn’t see hardly anybody. Being retired is fun, going at off times.
I have a new gadget to play with! A trail cam (GardePro A3) that I got this week and started “messing with.” Trying to figure out how it works.
So I have a couple tripods that I have been using, a short one, and a tall one to mount the thing on. All I have is a typical suburban lot, no trails nor woods. Just my back yard.
So what I have been capturing are squirrels, cardinals, blue jays, and lots of sparrows at our backyard feeders.
I’m really loving the cardinals.
Lots of seed spills on the ground so I have spent some time capturing that.
So far it has been lots of fun. I have it on motion sensing and it takes one still photo and ten seconds of video.
So I end up with lots and lots of images and video and I’m finding that it takes some time to wade through it to get unique captures.
This juvenile Coopers Hawk showed up and checked things out. I captured its image with a conventional camera through my living room window.. I’m sure they like the feeders also. We see bird and squirrel parts every once in a while. I think there is a nest close by. I have seen other hawks in our yard the last month or so.
The first evening I had the trail cam I set it on the back patio to see if any big critters showed up, and just me!!
So, you veteran trail camera people, do you have any good tips for me?
So lately our plain jane skies have spiced up a little bit, especially at sunset. So I have been flying my drone quite a bit.
There are even interesting skies on our dog walks.
One day we had a spectacular sunset to the west and…
to the East we got a nearly full Wolf Moon rising.
And a big thank you to Klara. Her excellent moon shots reminded me of my humble Wolf Moon shot for this month. Go check the link and see what she did with the Wolf Moon. Truly Spectacular.
Happy Skywatching to you! I am linking up at Skywatch Friday.
Hey, I got a package from Amazon! I told my son that I won a major award!! I lied and told him that it said frajili on the cover.
https://flic.kr/p/2mY1GuC
Logan said, so you got a leg lamp?
What, no!! I got something better!!
I got a trail cam!! True confessions, can a major award be something you bought for yourself?
So I installed the 47 batteries, configured all the 94 settings and put it on a tripod to face one of Heather’s bird feeders….. No birds, but lots of crickets!!
So I pivoted it to look at Heather’s other feeder. I sat outside with my book and my iphone. I played wordle, made an instagram post, read a chapter. And the whole time a flock of cardinals was flocking the feeder. And I thought oh boy, I got a bunch of bird pics. So I went to check it out.
And I got this old boomer guy.
I got my other gadget out and flew it front in front of the new gadget and it got picked up.
Last week I took my Subaru in for some routine maintenance. I had to wait for a little bit so I did something very “unSubaru ownerlike.” I walked across the street to Mom’s Family Diner to eat breakfast without first consulting Trip Advisor, Google, Facebook, or anything else to check it out. Just went in naked so to speak (you understand I am not being literal here.)
Turns out I made a great decision. I had their 2x2x2 breakfast special. Two eggs, two pancakes, 2 sausage patties and it was great and the coffee was drinkable.
So that proves you can go places naked and it will turn out okay (I am not being literal here.)
