Tag Archives: Lafortune Park

Out and About

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Since the pandemic lots and lots more walkers and dog walkers in the neighborhood.

I’m still learning this whole retirement thing. One thing is trying to figure out how to structure my day.

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My trusty Subaru CrossTrek. With my cool, unused, noisy, costs me 1 mpg roof rack.

So after over 40 years of getting up early during the week and hurrying to get my exercise, breakfast, and newspaper reading in, I started going to bed a little bit later so I could watch Stephen Colbert and waking up later and doing my coffee drinking, breakfast eating, and newspaper reading.

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Saint Francis Hospital across the street from Lafortune Park

And that was fine the problem was exercising. It’s summer in Oklahoma and as usual it is hot. So by the time I got done with the preliminaries it would be like 11 am. So I’d go do my thing, run at Turkey Mountain or on the river or whatever.

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Swings at Lafortune. My 22 year old son used these when he was two. They removed the seats and chains during the first part of the pandemic, now they are back.

So today is like, okay Colbert is not the funny without an audience. I like to read more than watch television and I hate to say it but I may be a natural early riser. So today I got up and went to Lafortune Park and run/walked my three miles and then went to the gym and used their hot water and towels to clean up.

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Our lush patio. Thank you to Mrs. Bates

So I am going to try this a little while. I think it might work out until the weather changes. It’s kind of like my friends that go on mission trips to Tanzania. One thing they love is that when you are over there, when it gets dark you go to bed, and you get out of bed when the sun comes up. They love the simplicity, among a bunch of other things.

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The Tiki I had in my office for years is thriving in its new digs. We both retired.

And talk about simplicity. My antique Iphone crapped out on me. I tried everything I could do and ended up taking it to one of those store front phone doctor places. Wish me well. Just to have some thing I went to Target and bought a $20 burner and 30 minutes worth of time. Just talk and text, no internet, no nothing. Remember those days? Don’t you worry though I’ll be back in business in two days with either my antique or a brand new one.

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Who says I am not any good at gardening?
Oklahoma Covid-19 New Cases per day.

On the pandemic side it kind of looks like due to a lack of interest in doing anything about it by our national and state leadership, it is skyrocketing. New cases per day in Oklahoma have gone up by a factor of eight since early June.

So I’ll be socially distancing and isolating for the foreseeable future. What about you? How are you doing?

Skywatch Friday – Winter Sky

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It’s been cold here and I’ve been cooped up. Sunday morning I went for a walk around Lafortune Park, a 3 mile trek around a combination golf course, library, playground, tennis complex, and little league ballparks. One of those huge rambling urban parks that I tend to love. I’ve been around it hundreds of times over the years and of course I took my camera and I took this photo just focusing on the water and not paying attention to the sky. I was pretty happy with the result. I got a pretty good walk in also.

I am linking with Skywatch Friday.

Skywatch Friday – A Walk in the Park

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This past weekend son Logan and I decided to take a walk around Tulsa’s Lafortune Park. Lafortune Park has a big playground, picnic areas, tennis courts, a high school, baseball parks, and two golf courses with a walking path about 3 miles long winding around it all. 

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I didn’t bring my camera, just my cell phone. Luckily there were some pretty decent skies.

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Part of the trail was a little muddy. In the 26 years we have lived in Tulsa I bet that I have either walked or run around Lafortune hundreds of times. 

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I love pedestrian bridges. Logan is now 20, when he was about 3 he liked to go hide under this bridge and pretend he was a troll. The kid used to drive me crazy!! Perfectly good playground 100 feet away. Oh well. 

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There he is. He lags a little behind but it works out because I take pictures and study on things and eventually he catches up to me.

I’m linking with Skywatch Friday.

Skywatch Friday – Closing out September

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This month we had the Harvest Moon. I love full moons. I take photos of all I can and apply all sorts of filters and editing to them. I hope that doesn’t bother you.

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I went for a walk last week and caught a sunset and as a bonus I got lots of long narrow tree trunk shadows.

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This is the Powerline Trail on Turkey Mountain, here in Tulsa. It’s the fast route from the north end of the wilderness park to the parking lots on the south end. It’s not the easiest though, you go straight up and down a couple of big hills. But is hard to get lost on it.

Various sights around Tulsa this week.

I’m linking with Skywatch Friday

Skywatch Friday – Running to Lafortune Park and Back

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Started when the sun was low which makes for long shadows. Since my knee injury a couple years ago I always walk a half mile before running.

I am being a little ambitious with my running this Fall. I have signed up for the Tulsa Run 15K and the half marathon event of the Tulsa Route 66 Marathon. I’m also thinking about doing the 25K event at a Trail Race on Turkey Mountain.  And of course it is all well and good to sign up for this stuff but at you also have to train for the runs.

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Tulsa is a city of trees and Up with Trees is a great organization that wants us to have even more!!

So most of my training runs have been up and down the River Trails here in Tulsa. I love the River Parks trails but you know, you need a little variety now and then. There is a park a few miles northwest of our house, Lafortune Park. It has an 18 hole golf course, and a 18 hole par three course, lots of picnic areas, tennis courts, a library, a tennis center, a lawn bowling pitch, a high school, with football and baseball fields, and best of all a 3 mile running/walking track that winds its way around all of those other things.

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I ran by the offices of Crisis Pregnancy Outreach. This is a great organization that is devoted exclusively to the babies and their mothers. No time for wedge politics or anything like that. You want to do politics go somewhere else. If you are concerned about babies and mothers, this is your place.

I have run around the park many times, and Heather and I have walked around it a lot, even son Logan and I have done the three miles a bunch of times.

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The closest thing to Fall Color I saw on my trek

Well I wanted to close the loop so to speak by running from the house to the park. From the house I have walked, run, and biked to the Creek Turnpike Trail. And although I have not done it all in one outing, I have walked, run, and biked about 20 miles to the east, and to the west and northwest probably 30 miles or more. So I wanted to extend my connectivity the few miles to Lafortune and get an 11 mile run at the same time. I had already done nine miles last week, so I wanted to do 11 this past weekend.

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I love old signs. This sign has been there a long time even the store is long gone. It’s days are numbered though as there is some construction going on.

So off I went. It was different than running on a running path. First of all I wasn’t wearing headphones. Running on the street with headphones is a prescription for getting run over. I had a good friend who got run over and died while running on a freeway frontage road with headphones on. Second is the camber of the road. The crown. You really have to alternate what side of the road you run on otherwise you will tear up your knees or ITB band.

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I passed a new restaurant going in at a busy intersection. I am a sucker for glass blocks.

But hey, it was all good. A nice brisk, sunny day.

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Saint Francis Hospital.

It about wore me out. I didn’t have any time goals. I just wanted to finish and yes I walked a lot.

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Probably 60% on the streets, roads, and sidewalks, the rest on park trails or vacant fields.

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I know, I know, I should have been in church on Sunday morning but running had me totally in the moment and it all seemed to go by in a flash.

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Next Saturday is the Tulsa Run 15K. It will be my 23rd. it is my favorite race of the year. It will be cold!!! but that is okay. I have the cold weather gear. I know how to dress for the cold weather, the hot weather, and wet weather, and dry weather. It doesn’t matter to me.

Here is the garmin video my very slow run.

Here is the much more fun “relive” version of the run. I like it much better for its 3D aspect plus it makes it appear that I ran the whole way.

I’m linking with Skywatch Friday

Skywatch Friday – Pond Reflections

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My favorite go to 3 mile walking/running loop is Lafortune Park just a few miles from the house. The trail goes around a golf course, tennis courts, and a playground, and by a several ponds so there almost always moments to rest a little bit and snap a pic or two. I’m always wanting to yell “You the Man!” or “In the Hole!!” at the golfers but never have, probably never will. I used to work with a guy who when we played golf with the CEO of our employer would say, when the CEO hit the ball, “Oh my gosh, look at the ball go!!” He even said it when I hit it, or whiffed it as mostly the case. I always thought it was funny.

Full Moon

We were celebrating my wife’s birthday yesterday and when we got home I noticed that we had a full moon. So I dug out my trust Canon SX40 Superzoom and took a few pics of the moon. I an one of them through Topaz Textures and then uploaded onto my Ipod Touch and used DistressedFX to further process the image to bring out the features of the moon.  This moon doesn’t have a cool name like some of the other moons. It is called the Long Night Moon.

Skywatch Friday

Skywatch Friday – Where are the Leaves?

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Tulsa’s Lafortune Park

From the archives last January. I love how we can see the bones of the trees after the leaves all fall off. Fall and Winter are seasons of short days but great light and the opportunity to see familiar scenes differently. Here in Oklahoma it can get cold when a front blows through but generally there is a sunny warming period for a few days afterward where we get a short respite from Winter. It makes a big difference.

I’m linking with Skywatch Friday 

Wednesday Waters – Lafortune Park

Lafortune Park Pond

We are deep into Spring here in northeast Oklahoma and we have lots of rain so one can see why this area is called “Green Country” by some. Pretty soon will come the high temps and humidity but after all these years that doesn’t bother me that much. You learn how to adapt.

I’m linking with Wednesday Waters