In late July this year I went on a bike ride on the Arkansas River Trails here in Tulsa. I took a “good camera” along. I only take a good camera if there is no chance of rain.
Here is the Public Service Company Oklahoma’s Tulsa Power Station. They have two sources of natural gas to run the plant. I worked for one of the source pipelines for eight years and then I went to work for the other source pipeline.
And here is my bicycle with the Williams Crossing Bridge in the background. It is a beautiful pedestrian bridge that is only about two or three years old. It was named “Bridge of the Year 2026” by the American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) and the National Steel Bridge Alliance. Read all about it here. I checked on the bridge construction almost weekly while it was being built. It was fascinating to watch.
Above is a photo from September 2025 showing the bridge at night. It has one of those funky lighting systems that can do all sorts of colors.
There were rowers on the river that day. Used to be Tulsa had quite a rowing community at one time, then Covid came, and then came the reconstruction of the Zink Dam and the Williams Crossing Bridge so it is nice to see rowing on the river again.
21 plus miles. Not a bad ride for an old fat guy is what I think.
Switching gears to the home neighborhood.
A neighborhood sunset in late July. If I don’t feel like launching the drone then I walk across the street to our neighbor’s driveway to get the right angle. The street is straight east and west and the sunset in July is a little north of west so I have to get a little south to see it.
This is a reverse sunset looking east on another day catching the glow of storm front off in the distance.
I am still way behind on posting my sky photos. These are from the last half of July
This is a neighborhood photo showing a front blowing through.
A sunset photo looking west from our neighborhood greenbelt.
A drone photo about 40 meters over our house looking west from Tulsa.
I was on a bike ride on a trail I hadn’t used in a long time. It’s closed, for repairs. It looks okay to me!
A view from a bridge across the Arkansas River looking north. To the right is a complex of buildings that used to be the Oral Roberts Hospital and Medical School. They are now regular office buildings. The high rise to the left is the Muskogee Creek Nation River Spirit Casino.
Here’s a closeup of the Casino from the bike trail around the riverside of the complex.
And from the same trail only a couple miles north is a view across the Arkansas River to Turkey Mountain.
And July’s Full Buck Moon. I love moon photos. I have hundreds of them.
And this is a drone shot that I modified by having a program called Dynamic Auto Painter using a modernist acrylic techniques. It’s not AI. DAP has been around a long time before AI ever showed up. I kind of like how it turned out.
Back in May the weather turned warm, the sun came out, and off Heather and I went to the nursery. We went to a gigantic place way out in the boonies.
There’s my bride Heather going full speed in the nursery. She is a certified Oklahoma State University Master Gardener and she is reinvigorated this spring to get some plants. I went along to pull the cart and take photos. I don’t necessarily take photos of what she is buying.
Pink Impatiens
Colea
French Marigolds
More French Marigolds
Plum Cockatoo Petunias
Even more French Marigolds
Dayglo Yellow Dahlia
Black Mamba Petunias – my favorite plant name for the day
Orange Marigolds
Callie Pink with Eye Syngenta Flowers
And a large Garden Ornament on the way out.
A good time was had by all. Heather got lots of plants, I got lots of photos.
As part of our trip to southeast Oklahoma’s Hochatown we visited the Beavers Bend Safari Park. They have quite a collection of animals. Many in enclosures and others out in the woods confined by fences but otherwise roaming around. I’ll post about the roaming animals next week.
Common Emu
A vervet monkey. Sorry about the camera focusing on the cage instead of the animal.
A couple months ago I stopped in the Tulsa suburb of Sapulpa to check things out.
Close to the downtown of the city I saw this large church. It was very imposing but I thought it looked a little awkward looking with that steeple that seems to need to be attached to a much larger building.
It is Prase Fellowship Church. I don’t know much about it but I liked the design on their sign showing clasped dark and light hands. I guess I am woke but I like the imagery. We need more woke stuff in my opinion.
The core downtown of Sapulpa has all sorts of trendy stores, restaurants, and a brewery. I liked this “umbrella alley” I’ll call it. I know lots of other places have similar installations but this is the first one I have seen. I love the different colors. The thing about Oklahoma is that the wind blows a lot here and the these umbrellas were dancing around pretty good. It looks like there are a few gaps where maybe a few umbrellas just flew off.
This is a mural on the city’s performance playhouse. I love murals and I think this fits.
And this is interesting. At first I thought it was a bar for surveyors or geocachers. Nope, its an outdoor event space.
Route 66 runs right through Sapulpa and there a lot of Route 66 themed stores and restaurants in town. This was on the outskirts. It is a barbecue restaurant. It wasn’t open when I was there.
So after seeing the sights I headed back home to Tulsa. I am linking to Through My Lens.
Here in the USA, a big deal this year is that it is the 100th Anniversary or Route 66. The cross country highway between Chicago, Illinois, and Santa Monica, California. Made famous in the book, “The Grapes of Wrath” by John Steinbeck telling of the migration of people from the Midwest to California during the depression. It has since become a destination in itself of people wanting to make the trek. All up and down the length of the road, individuals, cities, and states are sprucing up their attractions along US 66 for this year.
Oklahoma is full of Route 66 attractions and I have been to almost all of them. The Tulsa area has its share, including Rock Creek Bridge near the suburb of Sapulpa. The above photo was taken in 2021 when one could still drive across it.
Below is two years ago when it was blocked off because of safety concerns. You could still walk across it with no problems.
What has happened since then is that plans were made and money was spent and a grand opening was held this past April making this bridge a destination.
They have parking areas, picnic tables, lights.
And walkways so you could legally get an angle to get better photos of the bridge. Before you might have to venture out to some pretty thorny, snaky areas, to get a shot but now you can do it safely. They still have that big ugly power pole to deal with but it’s authentic.
You still can’t drive on it. But that is okay. This is the view from east to west. I think the bricks are mainly original.
And this is from west to east. Yep, I used a filter on the photo because the sky was white and not too pretty.
And a sign and sitting area, just waiting for people to make selfies.
And an old vintage truck is installed.
And an old decorated, still in service, oil tank as a background.
It’s nice to see things spruced up.
Here is a link to an article by the National Park Service on the Bridge, and here is a link by a local television station that covered the grand opening festivities.
I went on a bike ride during a sunny, cool morning this week. It was glorious. I stopped here at the Arkansas River as it goes through Tulsa. That bridge going across the river is Williams Crossing, named for the corporation that donated about one gazillion dollars to build it. I saw some people gliding, almost flying across the bridge.
This is them. They stopped at the western end. Two roller skaters and a scooter. No wonder they were so smooth looking going across.
This past week, I broke out the old drone and launched it from the backyard to get some skywatch shots.
Here you can see a front coming through.
I put this photo through a filter to get some color.
One day storm clouds were building up. I launched the drone but it started barking at me at about 15 meters warning of high winds. So this is a low level shot of the clouds. You can see that the drone is just a little above roof peak level and below the power lines. When the drone barks I listen to it. I don’t need it flying away in the wind. It almost got away from it once and I went through the recall procedure and it came back.
Recently I went to the Tulsa suburb of Sapulpa to check out the Rock Creek Bridge. A must stop for Route 66 fans especially since this year is the 100th year of Route 66’s existence. The bridge is open to foot traffic only.
From there I ventured back into Sapulpa and found this Umbrella Alley. I love all the colors. The day I was there the wind was blowing pretty hard through the alley and the umbrellas were dancing. As they say in the musical “Oklahoma”
**“Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweepin’ down the plain, And the wavin’ wheat can sure smell sweet, When the wind comes right behind the rain.”**
If you love wind. Move to Oklahoma, we have lots for everybody.
I also found this brand new place, The Waypoint Lounge! I was sure it was a bar for geocachers. But alas, it is an event space with lots of amenities. Check the link. It is hard to make money off of geocachers. They really like free stuff.
Back home, a view down the road in my neighborhood.
I don’t have copyright
And I finished a jigsaw puzzle. I google lensed it and it is Hallstatt, Austria. Sure is pretty place is what I think.
I don’t have copyright
And from our outer space. This is from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope augmented with data from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. It shows “Nebula NGC 6357 that contains Pismis 24, a young cluster of stars about 5,500 light-years from Earth.”
To me this is breathtaking.
So that’s a wrap for this week. I’m linking with Skywatch Friday
