Tag Archives: Geocaching

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?)

Lake McMurtry 12K Trail Race and the Leap of Doom

Saturday morning I got up at dark thirty and headed out to western Oklahoma to Lake McMurtry to run the 12K portion of the Lake McMurtry Trail Run. They also had 25K and 50K events. The people who run these trail runs are hard core and they consider the 12K to be kind of like a fun run or something.

The Race Director, Trail Zombie got us all organized and everything with a few simple directions. Mainly don’t get lost and don’t cheat. TZ as we call him directs several races during the year, leads weekly runs on Turkey Mountain, volunteers a lot and has his own full time business. He is one of the world’s really nice guys.

And here is the start. I started out last place and stayed last place for a long time. 12K is about 7 miles and I finally passed a few at about mile four. I say a few because I think I finished 46th out of 50 or something like that.

The course was an out and back which means that we run back on the same trail we run out on. Plus the other races used this route as part of the route of their races. This means that people have to be aware of what is going on and let people pass by. I’ve run lots of trail races and I have never seen any conflict on the matter. People just pull off and let others pass and everything is cool. The whole ethic of trail racing is cool and laid back and that is why I like it. Don’t get me wrong, people run the race hard.

The race was almost entirely in the woods but we broke out into grassland just briefly a couple times.

And here is the beer stop. One stop but we hit it twice. How many races do you know provide craft beer at the water stops. I had a Coop Brewing DNR the second time, I forget what it was I had the first stop, but it was good.

And right close to the beer tent is the regular stuff, water, gatorade, pickle juice (yep, I’ve learned to have a shot of it when I can), baked potato quarters rolled in salt, bananas, cookies, nuts, m&ms. No wonder I can’t lose weight and no wonder I don’t finish any better than what I do.

I actually buckled down and ran the the last few miles to the finish and didn’t take any photographs. My average miles split was 13:30 which is not too impressive but is at least a minute faster than most trail runs I run in so I am pretty happy.

At the finish TZ told me where to find the “Leap of Doom.” It is a feature of the 25K and 50K races but they don’t let us 12K baby runners on it out of fear for our lives. But, I fortified my courage with a beer and headed out to check it out.

I could tell I was getting close. One thing about TZ is he is good at warning people. I couldn’t turn back even though I wanted to so I ventured on ahead.

And the warnings kept coming. But I was intrigued, I mean who doesn’t want to see the 72nd wonder of the world.

Gulp

Here are the instructions. I don’t know how to breathe and scream at the same time, do you?

Of course I had to record the event for posterity. This is first attempt.

This is the second attempt. Do you like my shoes? Do you think I should put movie ambitions on hold for a while?

And so I survived the famous Leap of Doom. Well the other thing I needed to do was go find a geocache.

The nearest one was about a kilometer away so I walked to it. Turns out that the location was right on the the trails used in the other races. While I was looking for it several runners stopped and asked if I was okay.

I turned my Garmin watch on for the hike. I get amused at myself when I run on a geocaching hunt cause it shows me going around and around, and I did go around and around. I finally found it though.

And here is the location. I loved the old car. The amazing car geeks at Car Spotting Tulsa think it is a late 40’s Chevy. I love all the bullet holes. And yes I did find the cache.

So, I was done. Got a lot done over there in Lake McMurtry is what I think, ran a race, jumped the leap of doom a couple times and found a geocache and a neat car. So I gathered my stinky self up and drove back to Tulsa. On the way I stopped in the little oil field of Yale, Oklahoma and toured Jim Thorpe’s house. Fascinating story about the greatest athlete of all time who lived in a small town in Oklahoma. That will be on the next post.

Thanks for hanging with me all this way!

Friday Lunchtime Geocaching

It was Friday so at lunch I headed out to east Tulsa to replace a geocache that somebody said they couldn’t find. No wonder they couldn’t find it. The tree that it was hidden in has disappeared. All that’s left is a pile of saw dust. So, scratch that. So what the hey I’ll go find one. So off I went. I miscalculated where to park and had to take a long walk around to find a bridge across a creek.

I got across the bridge and some young lady comes jogging and passes me and keeps looking behind her and I could tell that I was bothering her but there was nothing I could do about it. So I finally got close to the cache and tucked into the woods to find it. I was wearing my cowboy boots. They have never been dirty. Well they got plenty dirty. I ended up in a creek and when I tried to pull myself out of the creek I grabbed what turned out to be thorns and I let go and my boots slid into the creek and the thorns grabbed onto my nice shirt. Well I got the thorns loose from my shirt but my trousers and boots were all muddy.

So anyway I got out and found the cache and all. And of course I had to take pictures of the blessed event and all that. You know because us geocachers are all very manly, well except for the women, who are all kind of womanly, but we all like our boo boos to be noticed, right? So here is the picture of my manly boo boos.

So I made it out of the woods and back on the trail and just as I pop out of the woods guess who comes jogging by. You got it, the young woman who was worried about me. Now, she is really worried about me and speeds on ahead, turning around and looking at me more and more. So I start doing my old man shuffle. You know because I am now 60 years and four days old and I’m entitled to shuffle a little now and then. Somehow the shuffle doesn’t reassure her. I kept thinking, how does somebody so young and skinny run so danged slow. Maybe I should be the one who should be nervous, right?

And to make it worse, she stops at the bridge and pulls out her cell phone and is talking on it and then heads across the bridge. The same bridge that I need to go across. Keep in mind, this is in east Tulsa, which is not the best neighborhood in this fair city. So I do my old man shuffle across the bridge following her, thinking, just run girl and get away from me. Fortunately, she heads one way on the other side of the bridge, the opposite way that I needed to go to get back to my car so I can get back to work.

So feeling totally bummed that I made her feel nervous I make it back to the car and decided to not to go home to change my boots and slacks. Fridays are pretty slow due to our work schedule. So I went back to work with muddy boots and pants and nobody seemed to even notice.

So tell me, have you had any boo boos lately? Have you made anybody nervous lately? We want to know

Geocache Maintenance on Turkey Mountain

My Kia Soul parked on Turkey Mountain where the new Outlet Mall is going.

My friend Trail Zombie told me the other day that he thought my Rock City geocache on Turkey Mountain had gone missing. About the same time I got an email from a pesky out of state Geocaching Dot Com Administrator basically telling me to go check the cache.

Okay, Okay I get it, I will!! Having a teenager in the house I knew hot to act. So off I went last Saturday. I dropped the kid off at his Improv class and sped to the nearest Dollar General Store and got me some new containers and notebooks. I got several because, well, you know, well it turns out that several of my caches were gone missing. But hey, I’ve been busy.

I took along my new SJCAM SJ4000. It is a Go Pro clone for cheapskates like me. The video is pretty darn boring but it gives you and idea of the trails on Turkey Mountain.

And this video shows me getting closer to Rock City. Named for the big rocks there. We Okies re pretty darned creative with our place names don’t you think?

Anyway I took a little different route back with smoother flatter trails.

And I love this big old tree. I think that it is outside the boundaries of the proposed outlet mall. At least I hope it is.

I was fully nerded out with cell phone, camera, video camera, and a GPS enabled watch. Why you ask? Well you wouldn’t take a Ferrari out with instrumentation would you? Anyway the above shows you the route.

After I left Turkey Mountain I motored downtown, checked on one cache, replaced another, and then went over close to Saint Francis Hospital, replaced one near there (not on hospital property), and then over to a big freeway exchange in south Tulsa where I had yet another one that had gone missing.

And I still picked the kid up on time.

A busy fun time.

Hiking in Oxley Nature Center

I’m a little late in writing this post. Back during the Thanksgiving weekend my brother Bob drove up from Corpus Christi to spend the holiday with us. One day I took he and my son Logan to Oxley Nature Center here in Tulsa for a little hike.

They have a great nature center at Oxley with helpful people who will give you as much information as you need, everything from a map to helpful directions, and of course flush toilets. Right outside the door headed for the trails is this, an insect hotel. I think it is more like a homeowners nightmare. It is kind of cool though.

Oxley has a great variety of trails.

Even with a lot of people by the time you get a quarter mile away from the parking lot you hardly see anyone.

Oxley is kind of low and has lots of water even during the drought that we are emerging from.

It has a great variety of terrain from deep woods and brush to more open areas. We walked about four miles or so during a nice warm day.

it looks like a duck lost a battle after a furious fight.

I’m a geocacher and found one out in the brush while Bob and Logan waited on me (they don’t like geocaching.) We also passed this cache that I found several years ago. Nice to see that it is still there.

We liked all the benches and places to rest. Oxley is a great place to spend a nice afternoon.

Linking with Nature Notes

Running and Geocaching

I’ve been kind of quiet on the geocaching scene for a long time. Saturday I joined the monthly confab of the Tulsa Area Geocachers for the first time in years. It was nice seeing some familiar faces and meeting new people. It got me kind of revved up for geocaching again.

A few hours later I dropped Logan off at Clark Youth Theater for rehearsal. Let me diverge a little bit for some bragging. Logan auditioned for and got a small part in Clark’s Best Christmas Pageant Ever. Heather and I are thrilled. OK, back to business. Oh yes, so dropped the kid off and then drove over to Riverside Drive. There were several relatively new geocaches that I hadn’t found yet, plus I wanted to get a run in so I combined them.

So I headed south, running with my GPSr and then stopping to look. They were very challenging and I found them. I’m not showing the any of the caches or the locations where they were hid because it would kind of spoil the fun for others.

My favorite was one called Jingle. It is by M5. He is notorious for very sneaky, very challenging, and creative hides. At first I was a little disappointed as “This is too lame, too easy.” Yeah, well shame on me. I had the container in my hands but the problem was that I had to solve a puzzle to get to the log to sign it. The geocacher’s credo is that if you don’t sign the log then you don’t get credit for the cache. I sat down on a nearby bench and messed it for a long time. I had two basic methods. Figeting with it, and fooling with it. I alternatively fidgeted and fooled with it until it just kind of came apart in my hands. I signed the log and then I had to put it together again which was almost as hard. Tell you what though. Anytime you find an M5 cache is a good day.

If you clink on the link above and hit the little arrow down at the bottom you can see that my northbound return trip to the car went a lot faster than my southbound trip.

Anyways it was combination running and geocaching trip

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