Tag Archives: Sapulpa

Rock Creek Route 66 Skywatch

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.

NGC 6357/Pismis 24 (Chandra/Webb)
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

Sapulpa’s Route 66 Christmas Chute

Tuesday night Heather, Logan, our Pom Kodi, and I loaded up and drove to the Tulsa suburb of Sapulpa to check out the Route 66 Christmas Chute in their downtown. We went last year and loved it!!

The city blocks off several blocks of Route 66 downtown and install these big frameworks and then people decorate them. You walk underneath the decorations. It is wonderful and you have great light for taking photographs. Also the merchants really go all out decorating their storefronts for the occasion.

Most of the restaurants are open if you are hungry or thirsty plus there are pop up shops selling food, drinks, and gift items.

Logan really loves gingerbread cookies.

Heather loves snowmen.

I love the reindeer and the sled.

Kodi loves Heather!

He also found two other poms to have a faceoff with. They were barking at him and he was just looking. He didn’t like being pulled away. I swear Pomeranians are the most spoiled dogs ever but we still love ours.

The Grinch was in a storefront!!

I figured out what Santa is going to leave me.

If you like Christmas trees, they have dozens of them, from little dinette sized trees.

To living room sized.

And big ole – courthouse plaza sized.

I think a good time was had by all.

It’s open every night through December 31. Check out their website. Download the printable scavenger hunt check list.

I’m linking with My Corner of the World

Skywatch Friday – Spring is Having a Little Trouble Springing

We are having a very wet and cool Spring here in Tulsa. We get soaked with rain for a day or two and then the sun comes out and all the mosquitoes celebrate!

I like the cloudy skies because they make for more interesting photographs. I like the sunny days because they are fun for walking or riding my bike.

I go outside with the dogs every morning to keep them from barking and bothering the neighbors. Sometimes though when I let them out and their are rabbits and squirrels in the yard the dogs are going to bark, and bark a lot!! And then if there are other dogs in the neighborhood barking, then our dogs are going to do what I call “Update their Barkbook Status”

Sometimes one can get pretty decent skywatch photos from your own home. I got this last week when I was out retrieving the paper. I think papers are a thing of the past. Used to be almost everybody had a paper on our street, now I think we are the only one.

Lafortune Stadium Baseball

Son and I went walking around Tulsa’s Lafortune Park and I noticed that some kids were playing baseball at Lafortune Stadium. I think it was what used to be called Pony League. I think they have a different name for them now. I love baseball, at any level, from peewee t-ball up to the major leagues. Tulsa has a AA Los Angeles affiliated team, the Tulsa Drillers. They didn’t play last year, I’m hoping to catch a few games this year if it seems safe to do so.

This is another Route 66 site. The Rhett Mansion in Sapulpa, Oklahoma. The former home of an oilfield gazillionaire back in 1911. It is now a wedding venue and from what I can tell on their web page and it has been very nicely restored and furnished. I love when historical buildings are repurposed into profitable enterprises. Not every building is suitable to be a museum.

The thing about Route 66 is that is more like a threaded stream of roads. The original road was called the Osage Trail. They didn’t build the Trail from scratch, they pieced together a bunch of existing roads and called them that. And since the start the various states would replace sections of Route 66 with new, wider, more modern roads and the old “alignments” as they are called reverted to being just local county roads. On one of these forgotten alignments sits the Teepee Drive in Theater on the outskirts of Sapulpa. It closed in 1990 and has sat there ever since. Apparently somebody wants to reopen it. So we’ll see what happens.

I know that I am on a little bit of Route 66 thing right now. Two things, first there are a lot of geocaches on it now in the Tulsa area especially the new Adventure Lab geocaches and I turned 66 last month so I am on a “66 on 66” type thing right now.

I wish everybody a great week! I am linking with Skywatch Friday, come check it out.