Tag Archives: Skywatch Friday

Skywatch Friday – Geocaching in Tulsa

Leave a reply

Last week one day I started with a hike with a friend of mine on the Mooser Creek Greenway. A three mile double loop where we heard a ton of birds and saw no other people.

I went home, got cleaned up, and headed out to Tulsa County’s Chandler Park in far northwest Tulsa for a meeting with an environmental non-profit that I volunteer for. After the meeting I checked my phone for nearby geocaches and sure enough there was one about 60 feet away. It actually was not where the cache was but there is some information on the sculpture one needs to determine the coordinates. Which I did.

There was another cache nearby where there are a lot of cliffs. I’ve looked for it off and on over the years because I don’t want to be climbing rocks or trees. But I decided to take a different tack on finding it and so I went down to the Lost City Trail.

The lost city trail winds in and out of the cliffs and is just plain beautiful. A scene or two in the movie “Flowers of the Killer Moon” were shot in areas of the trail.

There are steep cliffs and overhangs and all sorts of interesting stuff.

I find doing the shots over my shoulder seem to show the height of the cliffs better than straight on shots. Maybe its the sense of scale works better.

The clue for the cache is that it is in a hole. You know how many holes are in that cliff face? A bunch!! None of which I want to stick my hand into without knowing that is there. I took photos of various holes, none of which yielded anything. So I continue in not finding this cache.

I also tried my hand a few caches along Route 66 as it goes through Tulsa. One of which was associated with this sculpture.

And another one associated with this sculpture right across the street from the Eagle sculpture. Route 66 for some reason has all sorts of various

Tulsa's First Oil Well Historic Marker

And further east along US 66 there is another geocache associated with this plaque commemorating the first oil well drilled in Tulsa County. Tulsa used to be center of the oil industry in the United States and called themselves, “The Oil Capital of the World.”

So I had a pretty good time on a great day in some bright sunshine under clear skies.

I am linking with Skywatch Friday

Check the Geocaching.Com website to get information about it.

Skywatch Friday – Skies of Oklahoma

20 Replies

Here’s a sunset from the front yard.

And a reverse sunset (looking east) from the backyad.

https://flic.kr/p/2s2xUJF

A reflection of the sky at Tulsa’s Lafortune Park. I think I used the Becasso filter on this.

And a pond at the Turkey Mountain Wilderness Area. Another Becasso filter.

And a jigsaw puzzle I recently completed. It took me a while to figure it out.

https://flic.kr/p/FCutPQ

And from ten years ago. I saw this threatening sky on an after work run on Turkey Mountain. Luckily this was to the east so I wasn’t threatened. I would hate to be on the other side of those clouds.

I am linking with Skywatch Friday

Oklahoma Spring Skies

Spring in Oklahoma is not for the faint of heart. In the Tulsa area we had eight tornadoes recently. Lots of damage but no fatalities at least.

The skies of spring are often twisting and turning and giving off that strange green glow that signifies that nothing good is in store.

It makes for interesting photo opportunities though.

Plus the wind blows harder. The wind always blows in Oklahoma but the spring winds are fearsome. Makes for hard bicycle riding when you are going against them. I’ve learned not to fight going into wind. I just gear down and go slower. It’s not a contest. When I turn around and go with the wind I fly with the wind.

Linking with Skywatch Friday

Skywatch Friday – Hiking Oxley Nature Center

A couple weeks ago I felt like moving around so I ventured off to Tulsa’s Oxley Nature Center on an overcast day to wander around and see what I could see.

Oxley during the week is great. Nobody is there!! I didn’t see too many critters though. Oh well.

They have great flat trails there. Hardly a rock to trip over anywhere. Don’t worry I trip over roots, stubs, branches, and my own feet.

A repurposed major highway cuts through Oxley as a big wide, sustainable trail. I’ve seen lots of critters from this over the years when the trails are really too muddy to walk on.

I found me a big mess of fungi. Google lens tells me that this could be turkey tail. They gave several other possibilities and I picked Turkey Tail cuz I liked the name.

I come across a bridge with its own poem. It’s called “This Drop” by Sasha A. Martin. She was the “Artist in Residence” at Oxley a few years ago. I never met her but I would like to do so.

When she left they posted her poems all over Oxley. I always love seeing them. She is on instagram and her handle is @thatsashamartin. She is super talented.

The birds were out chirping away but I couldn’t get more than a glimpse of any of them except for the cardinals. They are hard to miss but they don’t wait long enough for me to focus and get a photo. Still it was nice having the Merlin App so I could figure out what they are.

Another nice surprise was the lakes, creeks, and marshes being full of water. I couldn’t quite figure it out until I said something on social media about it and then several people piped up and said that the low water dam holding water on the park had failed in the last year or two and they finally got it repaired and working again a few months ago. I was like, ohh. I pride myself on knowing what is going with stuff like that and everyone but me knew.

My pride will recover, in the meantime I am happy with the water being restored to Oxley.

I love boardwalks across marshes.

Here is the Nature Center at the Nature Center. Very well informed volunteers hang out there. I usually bypass it because I know where I am going. If I had stopped and asked why the low water, I am sure they would have told me.

Here is my wibble wobbling route on my hike. About 2.7 miles or so I think.

I am linking with Skywatch Friday and Galeria Himmelsblick

Skywatch Friday – Pearl Jackson Crosstimbers Preserve

Earlier in February on a nice day a group of volunteers from the Tulsa Urban Wilderness Coalition joined staff members from the Nature Conservancy to do some trail work the Conservancy’s newest preserve in Oklahoma, the Pearl Jackson Crosstimbers Preserve in Creek County, Oklahoma, just 20 or so miles from Tulsa. The Preserve, which is not yet open to the public, is 12,000 acres of hickory and oak intermixed with tallgrass prairie. The previous landowners had used fire to control invasive species and the land is in really good shape. The man who donated, what had been a ranch, to the Conservancy gave up fortune in development. Such generosity blows my mind.

So we all met in the Conservancy’s office on the property and got a briefing on the work to be done. The staff had started a rough trail from a proposed trailhead to a sporadic waterfall. So we were going to take loppers, saws, axes, pick axes, and other tools to remove limbs blocking the way and rocks that were on the trail. The trailhead was about a mile from the office so we shuttled people down there in four wheel drives.

My Subaru, with 77,000 miles, finally got a little mud on it as I took people down to the trailhead.

So we took off down the proposed trail doing our thing. I am guessing the trail was about a mile.

The land is gorgeous. Very rocky and extremely old hickory and oak trees.

Down at the waterfall. No water over it today as it hadn’t rained recently.

And here is the intermittent waterway that bring water to the waterfall.

Screenshot_26-2-2026_154413_www.instagram.com pearl jackson work day
Tulsa Urban Wilderness Coalition Photo

And a good time was had by all. The staff said that they plan to open portions of the preserve to the public but they have a lot of issues to work out beforehand. I’m guessing that it is going to be a least a year or two.

I’m linking with Skywatch Friday

Skywatch Friday – More Lafortune Park

A meandering stream good for a reflection

Golf course trees good for shadows

https://flic.kr/p/2rVW5dy

The duck pond is for ducks and other waterfowl.

Some pine trees at the Pony League baseball stadium is good for silhouettes

A meandering path is good for three miles.

A High School baseball field is waiting for the season to start.

A jigsaw puzzle looking kind of like the Golden Gate Bridge.

Another jigsaw puzzle with a spectacular bridge and a passenger cruise ship.

Linking up with Skywatch Friday

Skywatch Friday – Warming up to Icy Reflections

The weather is warming up fast these days. Just ten days ago we had snow everywhere, now it is almost all gone and we have balmy temps. These pics are from a hike about a week ago around Tulsa’s Lafortune Park on their 3 mile path.

My favorite tree at Lafortune Park. It makes for a great photo all four season. I love the reflections as well. We have a little ice in this photo.

And a little bit more ice near the playgrounds.

And at the duck pond.

backyard sunrise

And a decent sunrise from our backyard. Our little terrier Sadie gets me up every morning for the sunrise.

I’m linking with Skywatch Friday

Skywatch Friday – On the Move Edition

Me and a friend continue to hike on Turkey Mountain and other places. This is a moon gate leading into The Sanctuary section of Turkey Mountain. I go right through it, my friend goes around it. I don’t know why.

Turkey mountain has maybe nine lakes on it, plus two or three more in The Sanctuary. Anywhere else they would be called ponds. Three interesting things about the lakes (at least they are interesting to me) is, first, that the Wildlife Department stocks the lakes for fishing. Second there is a big colony of beavers on the mountain and they move as a group from lake to lake cleaning out all the fish in each pond. I think that is hilarious. Third, the beavers move up and down the Arkansas River and migrate to and from Turkey Mountain via Mooser Creek which is the northern border of Turkey Mountain. They know this because the wildlife has tagged a bunch of beavers so they can track their movements. I have a feeling that beavers are going to outlive humans.

This is a pipeline for one of my former employers running through Turkey Mountain. Last year another former employer of mine laid a pipeline adjacent to this one but they drilled the little swale you see instead of putting in a span like the one above. Drilling pipelines across tough spots has been all the rage for years. Contractors can now drill across the Mississippi River for large pipelines and hit the other side a mile away within a few feet of their target. They also do it in culturally sensitive areas like ruins and such. They can stand off a few hundred yards and drill way underneath the ruins instead of having to go around. The problem with going around is that you often run into more ruins.

The tree house in The Sanctuary. If you look close you can see a couple of swinging porch benches underneath. A nice place to wait out a rainstorm.

Anyway on this hike, it was almost exactly five miles. That’s my sweetspot.

Switching gears to the backyard. Sunrise!

Mid-day from my front yard looking east.

And a late sunset, looking west.

IMG_3867

Later that night, the Full Snow Moon. I love full moons on a clear night.

And a shot from the neighborhood green belt.

I’ve continued working on jigsaw puzzles on my ipad. I love beach scenes.

And a windmill jigsaw puzzle. The windmill is cool and I love the house. except not many windows upstairs. I like the lightning rods though. Random thought, I am sure that windmills get hit with lightning. Do they burn down?

I am linking with Skywatch Friday and Galleria Himmelsblick

Gilcrease Museum Skywatch

A couple weeks ago I ventured out to Tulsa’s Gilcrease Museum for a public meeting they were having to get public input on their garden spaces. The museum building is above. It is completed but they have not finished all their displays and I think they are still working on offgassing all the fumes from the concrete’s dewatering, carpet glue, paint, varnish and other chemicals. Things that can be okay levels for humans can be deadly to art. They are opening it in 2027. So now they are working designing the gardens to go in the immediate vicinity of the museum.

The meeting was not held in the museum, it is in an adjacent museum housing all their historical archives. (Among there documents is an original of the Declaration of Independence. They have it on display on July 4th sometimes, and I got to view one year. Big thrill.)

They had a consulting Landscape Architect talk about gardens and their plans for it. I thought it was all very interesting. And he had a model of what they were talking about. I think it will all be very nice. They just need funding. He didn’t say a figure but hey, if you have a Gazillion Dollars you don’t know what to do with give them a call. I’m sure they’ll take it. The Director of the Museum told everyone, “There are no small donations.” Yeah, well, he hasn’t seen mine yet.

After the talk I decided to take a stroll at the park adjoining the museum, Stuart Park. It was closed during construction but is now reopened. Has been for some time.

It’s a favorite of mine. It winds around a couple ponds and incorporates a bunch of sculptures that are going to be relocated on gardens adjacent to the museum.

The museum has several hundred acres and they are going to build trails for bicycling and hiking. They need funding for that as well, in case you have a second tranche of gazillion dollars that you don’t need.

The backside of the new museum from Stuart Park.

The museum has already started a bunch of work. It looked like they had mulched a considerable amount of invasive species. What was left was this sign about leaving the bees alone. You can bet that if you called Gilcrease security they would come running out the museum to save you. Probably now, call 911 instead.

Seeing the park was like seeing an old friend after several years. I loved it.

The views are wonderful.

And I love any type of wood structures. They rebuilt this and others.

I’m looking forward to 2027. They demolished the original museum in mid 2021. I loved it but it was a hodgepodge of various buildings added onto over the years and had an antiquated air conditioning system which is not good for an art museum. The vistor traffic flow was awkward and had all different levels which is not good for disabled people. They then built the new building on the same footprint as the original.

It’s going to be awesome.

I’m linking with Skywatch Friday and galeria-himmelsblick

Skywatching at Home

Son Logan drives me around these days. So I get to take photos while he is driving like this sunset in the neighborhood.

Here is a skywatch photo from my front porch

And from the backyard

Another from the front porch looking west toward the sunset

And a skywatch photo from my driveway looking east.

While walking the dog in our neighborhood greenbelt

A sunrise looking east

Teton sunset jigsaw puzzle

And a jigsaw puzzle. These look like the Teton mountains in Wyoming.

And the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Along with a peacock.

And a jigsaw puzzle of a cool little cabin in the woods.

Lifeguard Station

And a beautiful lifeguard shack on the ocean at sunset. Ignore the US flag flying in a funny manner.

IMG_4474

Over 200 million Americans are going to get hit with a polar vortex in the next day or so. For Oklahoma it is going to be the worst since the 2011 winter storm. Here is an action shot of me shoveling snow in that storm.

IMG_4472

And here is an action shot of our Maine Coon Chrissy during the storm. She loved the fireplace. I don’t know how she didn’t spontaneously combust.

IMG_4485

I picked her up and took her outside after all the snow fell. You can tell that she was not a happy kitty. I’m glad I had my heavy canvas coat and leather gloves or may not have survived this photoshoot.

I’m linking to Skywatch Friday

To my fellow Americans in the path of the oncoming storm. Stay warm and safe!!