We’ve had some pretty good skies up until just very recently when the smoke from the forest fires in the west showed up and grayed or pinked everything out.
The morning that I took these pics, the air was cool and fresh, a front was blowing through. We live for such summer mornings here in Tulsa.
A 5/8ths moon on a clear night a few days ago. Last night the moon was orange because of the haze.
Last weekend my wife and I visited some Parade of Homes houses. We love checking out the new styles. Here in Tulsa we are seeing a lot less brick and stacked rock on the outside and lots more stucco and squared off lines with dark trim. Times and styles change. I captured the above pic at a new subdivision. Pretty darn muddy.
This is a good place to get cleaned up. We like to look at the big expensive houses. It’s the only way we’ll get into one, legally. Wealthy people apparently like big bathrooms and I guess to save time they like to shower together. I hope they have a big water tank. Most likely they have a tankless water heater. We priced one as our old tank water heater has got some years on it and wow! They are expensive.
And here is a big tub with a built in diving platform. Careful!! The water is kind of shallow.
Here, you can belly flop off the vanity if you like. I like the frosted glass. This was a very light room. We see so many houses with big picture windows right over the tub. Kind of a waste. We have a big picture window over our tub. We installed blinds on that window and they have never been open. Nor will they be!! Ever!!
That’s enough foolishness for today I think. Everybody be safe out there! Oklahoma is now a top ten state in Covid cases per capita. We have only 40% of the population fully vaccinated. Fortunately the most vulnerable population, 65 and over, is about 80% vaccinated. Unfortunately ages 12 to 20 is only about 20% vaccinated. So we have a situation here. It’s frustrating because so many other countries do not have widespread access to a vaccine yet and so many people here disdain it. My wife and I, fully vaccinated, have started limiting again our exposure to indoor crowds and wear masks in indoor situations.
It’s a cool book. Knighton, a correspondent for CBS News, went to all our National Parks in one year in 2016. I think there were 59 National Parks in 2016 and it looks like we are at 64 now. He starts out on New Year’s Day on Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park where the sun first shines on the contiguous USA and ends at Point Reyes National Park on New Year’s Eve which is the last place the sun sets (on that date) on the contiguous USA.
In between he travels to all the other parks and has a little bit to say on each one of them. It’s more than just a listing of highlights. He talks about why he is going on this journey (spoiler, he got dumped by a woman) and his experiences. I found out we have a lot of parks that I have never heard of that are hard to get to and are not very “wired” although given the book was based on his 2016 experiences.
He also has something to say about the Parks not being very diverse in terms of their racial diversity and what is being done about that.
This was a surprising book and I loved it. I highly recommend it.
Saturday I raced my second race since the pandemic started. It was the Tess 5K Trail Run. It was on Turkey Mountain and was a fund and awareness raiser for the Tristesse Grief Center a local Tulsa non-profit that provides grief services such as counseling. The event also included a 10K run.
I did the race with my race friend Paula. We basically walked it and trotted it when we found non-rocky relatively flat places which on Turkey Mountain are not many.
I told everybody that I finished first in my age group, and I did and I was also dead last of the 13 men who ran the race. I was there though and finished vertically.
Got this nice medal. Truth be told, I am not a fan of the medals. They don’t really fit into my wife’s decorating scheme for the house.
Here’s the route. We started at the south parking lot (bottom of page) and went straight up the mountain (hill really) and did a loop, and came back down. The course was marked enough to where we didn’t get lost. Apparently somebody on a bicycle messed up the markers for the 10K so it’s results were in chaos. I am not knocking cyclists. They way outnumber the trail runners when it comes to cleanup days at the local trails.
So a good time was had by all. We each got a beer to go with the medal so that was an unexpected bonus.
The event was a win/win/win.
Challenging well marked course, check!
Unflappable course timers, I got the wrong tag number but the timer guy figured it out quickly without a lot of drama, check!
Nice tee shirt, check!
Beer, check!
Friendly race director and well organized volunteers, check.
Monday I loaded my bike up and headed to Oxley Nature Center and Mohawk Park which are located adjacent to each other in north Tulsa.
The Zoo is there also and it was a zoo both inside and outside the cages. Everybody in town was there. Hardly anybody was out on the roads and paved trails of Oxley and Mohawk.
Handmade Cloth Marigolds
I saw some of the installations for the The American Dream that I missed on my last outing here while hiking with Logan. The American Dream is part of the Greenwood Art Project that was held in conjunction of the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre. Here is my post on my last visit. Check out the The American Dream site for more information on it.
This tent is part of the installation. It symbolizes the tents that the massacre survivors lived in after the homes were burned. Reportedly some of the survivors escaped the massacre by going to what is now Oxley.
The inside walls are covered with photographs from the Massacre. Most of the installations for this project at Oxley were vandalized just a few weeks ago. It’s unknown who did it.
But I was back on the quiet trails of Oxley. I saw four deer, a small green snake, and lots of birds and butterflies.
Here’s a track of my wibble wobbly route.
Back at home, I am still launching my drone from my backyard when the skies look interesting.
I caught a rain shower to the north on midafternoon.
Other things going on. Wife, Heather taught a cardio drumming class at our gym. It was a “pop-up” class. Everybody had a good time.
The flowers are still growing. Here is a shot from early Wednesday morning catching the first light.
The grass is still growing. I turned on my Garmin GPS Sport Watch while mowing the yard so it tracked my movements. Our lot is about 1/6th of an acre, so very small and I walked about two miles. The grass was long and I cross hatched it so you can see that in the front yard (lower part of map). It also looks like I ventured into both of my neighbors houses. (I deny everything!)
I usually shoot full moons but we didn’t have one this week so here is a 1/8th moon. Sometimes we just have to go with what we are given!!
That’s about it for this week. I hope you are doing well and staying safe.
The Snake River as it passes through Idaho Falls, ID. A photo I took in 2016 and re-edited recently. The city has built very attractive trails on both sides of the river and that is where everybody goes on warm summer evenings, tourists staying at the nearby hotels, residents, runners, bicyclists. It is quite a gathering.
One of the many things I’ve learned from my fellow bloggers is to appreciate blooms and flowers through their whole lifecycle. Like these purple coneflowers that are supposedly past their prime. They are still beautiful to me.
The oil and gas guys and gals that I follow on twitter talk about their favorite cocktail, Ranch Water. We saw a recipe in the paper yesterday and decided to try it out. Silver tequila, lime juice, and sparkling mineral water and rim the glass with Tajin. It’s a really good drink but take my advice, one is plenty for the day!
We found some Topo Chico water and the Tajin. You rim the glass with Tajin and it really gave the drink This may be the first recipe that I have shared in a gazillion posts. Am I turning into a mommy blogger?
I did my handyman thing yesterday. Turned on the dishwasher and a short time later noticed a small amount of water on the floor and an E-15 error code on the panel. YouTube to the rescue! The door hadn’t closed all the way so the dishwasher leaked out the top, some of it got on the floor the rest went back into the dishwasher but underneath. Cool thing is that the manufacturer has a pan down there and if water collects it raises a float and flips a switch and turns the dishwasher off. Pretty clever I think, saves from making a big mess. So figured it all out. I’ll be strutting around the house for a month now. I would strut anyway but now I have a reason to do so. At least in my own mind.
Joe’s Farm in the Tulsa suburb of Bixby. All sorts of organic produce. Joe’s good at marketing. He was a chef in New York City at several restaurants so he quit that and now raises vegetables. He works his store. Circulating with the customers and providing ideas on how to cook the more exotic items.
Our Lizzie thinks she is a queen. Whenever we fold towels, she always shows up and rests her elbows on them. Doesn’t take kindly to being told to move.
She is such a brat.
Abby likes pillows too.
We have been inundated with rabbits this year. This was followed by hawks. I’m not sure who is going to win. My money is on the hawks.
And a bonus. Here is our patio with the blue chairs from about 35 meters or so.
Also at the request of several fellow bloggers I got my web site security upgraded to the https protocol. I hope that helps. I know several bloggers that have that protocol who’s sights causes my security system to warn me. Just so much I don’t understand about all this.
The other day I went to my yoga class and decided that I wanted to go hiking or walking so I went to Turkey Mountain here in Tulsa.
I parked in the lower lot, which I hardly ever do, and took the Red Trail which is kind of short. It has been a long time I have been on it. I was looking for just two miles or so. It was hot and humid.
https://flic.kr/p/2m9Lv63
About a quarter mile in on the trail I came across this electric cord strung across the trail. I have no idea why it was there. I hope somebody wasn’t trying to injure somebody. It was too high for a runner or walker but somebody on a horse could be injured or a bicyclist maybe sitting up. So I sent in the lat langs and the photo to the RiverParks office for them to take a look at it. I didn’t have any way of cutting it down. I have no idea why anybody would do such a dangerous thing.
At the bottom of the Red Trail it was pretty muddy.
And then you finish the Red Trail by going up to the parking lot on the paved trail. That was only about a mile so I wanted one more so I headed out on the Yellow Trail to get some extra distance.
RiverParks has put in a new selfie station on the trail. So here I am. Older, fatter, balder, and dumber than the last time you saw me.
I went out on an overlook I had never been on before and explored briefly a couple trails I had never been on. I could have sworn I have been on them all.
So here are my wibbly wobbly wanderings. No, I was not drunk!! I was pretty sweaty.
And from an earlier evening, a drone shot of the sunset from about 30 meters over our back yard.
And a morning skywatch shot from ground level.
And from three years ago plus or minus. A drilling rig in the STACK play of Oklahoma. The fracking vendor was setting up his frack tanks and positioning the pumps in preparation of fracking the well. You can see the green pipes laying on the ground. The gas gatherer is building their pipeline to the well pad. The well is fracked over a day or so and then they flow the water back from the well into tanks and then the gatherer takes the gas as soon as it is available. If the gatherer is a day late, the economic loss is permanent because you can’t flow twice as much the next day. So lots of pressure to get the timing right right on everything. Despite all that it was a pretty summer day in Oklahoma with beautiful clouds.
