Tag Archives: Conservation

Earth Day 2022 in Tulsa

This past Saturday I drove to Tulsa’s Arts District, just north of downtown, to help work an Earth Day booth for the Tulsa Urban Wilderness Coalition. It had been a long time since I had been to such an event. They used to have them on the main mall during the work week when I was still working.

Just as I got there a fashion show featuring recycled materials was underway. That was interesting.

It was pretty windy. Kind of a full skirt alert thing going on.

They had some musical performances. Some guys drumming and then later on some sort of hippie, country, poppy group who were not bad at all.

Chinese Wisteria

Wandering around the other booths I came up on the table for the Carrie Dickerson Foundation. Carrie Dickerson was a determined lady who led a coalition of people that forced the Public Service Company of Oklahoma to abandon the Black Fox Nuclear Power Plant project in 1982 after a nine year battle. Construction on the plant had already started and when it was cancelled, it was the only nuclear power plant to be cancelled as a result of legal and citizen action. As much as I am proud to be a member of an organization that forced an outlet mall to abandon their plans for a mall on Turkey Mountain, I’m in awe of the people who forced Black Fox to be shut down. People don’t remember it much any longer but Oklahoma has populists roots that are still there beneath the surface. RIP Carrie Barefoot Dickerson.

I’ll climb off my soap box long enough to show you a monarch butterfly who I saw flitting around the earth day events.

And then later on a bunch of young women in their prom dresses with their beaus, parents, and photographers came for the photo ops available at Guthrie Green. I thought it was kind of cool. I have great hopes for our young people. They are going to inherit the world. Personally, I think they are up to the task.

Our World Tuesday – Yellowstone Park’s Gibbon Falls

I have been out of pocket for a few days. My sister Ellen  who works as a seasonal Park Ranger in West Yellowstone, Montana for the Yellowstone National Park  invited me up for a few days for a chance to see a bit of the park with her. She loves sharing the park. 

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One of the first things we looked at was Gibbon Falls on the Gibbon River. A beautiful 84 foot drop of the Gibbon River.  This is the view from a bit downriver.

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The Gibbon  River is about 25 miles long and starts near the center of the park at the outlet of Grebe Lake and confluences with the Firehole River to form the Madison River.

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This is a view of the river downstream of the falls as it flows toward the Firehole River. I came across a post talking about how the Park Service is starting a process to remove non-native fish like rainbow and brown trout from the river and re-introduce native species such as cutthroat trout. They are starting later this month and is expected to continue to 2020 or 2021.  I love these kind of projects.

 Ellen tells me that the week I was there the visitor count had dropped off presumably because of schools starting. The park had the fewest people I have ever seen on my visits there. That being said, the parking lots fill up early and so you need to get up get out early to go see what you want to see.

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My sister Ellen

This is just a small bit of all that we saw in my few days at Yellowstone. I am trying to break my visit down into bite sized pieces to make it easier on me, and hopefully you.

This was maybe my fifth time to Yellowstone and the first time I didn’t just do a drive by, and instead got to hike a little and spend some time getting to see things. When I was a kid, we did the standard 1960’s thing and just breezed on by and maybe stopped to see Old Faithful and maybe a few thermal features but then it was back in the car and head out.

How about you? Have you ever been?

I am linking with Our World Tuesday