The other day the sky looked promising for a decent sunset. It seems the best conditions are high thin clouds. If they are too thick they kind of smother the sun and you get no color. And the thing is the colors don’t last so you have to be ready to go or the opportunity is gone. So I was home, my drone batteries were charged up so I launched it from the back yard.
If you are lucky, and I was that day, you get opposite sunsets which is where you get colors in any direction. So this is looking north.
And this is looking south.
And this was the west, the day before.
And this is looking down. You can see my orange landing pad. I do think that is my new roof. We color matched it to the old roof so there it looks the same. I do only periscope flights. I go straight up from the backyard and look around and then come back down. I don’t fly the drone over other people’s property or anywhere where I can’t just legally walk over and pick it up if something goes wrong. That’s just me though.
Tuesday I noticed that there was a hole in the sky so I took a photo of the hole.
I love power plants, especially those powered by natural gas and if they light up really good and have a cool sign then so much the better. This is Public Service Company’s Tulsa Power Station located on the Arkansas River in Tulsa.
This is a backyard sunrise shot from earlier this week.
And a shot of my neighbor’s sprinkler reflecting the sunset one day against a cool sky. Hey I’m opportunist and don’t apologize for it.
And this is from back in 2012 when our family went to Seattle for our vacation. We took a day trip to Mount Rainier National Park. I tried to take this photo but we were blacked out because the sky and the mountain was so bright. I figured out how to correct that on the iphone Lightroom app using their new masking capability, and I was able to bring us out from the dark. You can tell that I didn’t do that good a job on the masking but you know sometimes enough is enough.
Wednesday night was the Full Harvest Moon in Tulsa. Fortunately we had clear skies in Tulsa.
A friend in Arizona asked me if we had a lunar eclipse going on and I said, not as far as I know. Right after that the local news came on with a shot of eclipse so I grabbed my camera and went out and got my own shot.
Went on a bike ride again earlier this week. My knee held up pretty well and I was kind of babying it a little anyway. Anyway, I took another photo of our brand new dam and pedestrian bridge across the Arkansas River here in Tulsa. This is a view from the southwest side.
And this is a view from the northeast side. The river sure looks good with water in it.
And I rode back to my car down the east side of the river. Stopped for this photo. The hill on the other bank is the Turkey Mountain Urban Wilderness Area.
Sunday night I was taking our refuse and recycling carts to the curb for weekly pickup and I noticed this reflection of the sunset. Photographers are always droning on about leading lines. So after nearly 70 years of picture taking I finally got a leading line. So proud of myself.
I got sidelined for a few days with a sore knee. I finally went to the bone doctor and he gave me a range of treatment options from continue using OTC Ibuprofen to getting a steroid injected in the knee to a “surgical solution.” I opted the steroid in the knee. And it helped but I’m not 100% yet. We’ll just have to see how it goes.
I’ve been out and about. My wife and I had our 35th anniversary the other day and so we went to the zoo and 16,000 steps later my knee was calling my name!!! It felt great at first.
From a week or so ago. Part of a series of photographs showing that it was raining all around us except where we live.
And a cheerful morning sunrise
And an optimistic Labor Day. I fly my flag right side up!!
And a long last, the new Dam and Bridge across the Arkansas is done. They had a whole multi day party to celebrate over the Labor Day weekend called the “Big Dam Party.” I missed it all. I got out there Tuesday morning and checked it out myself. I had my own dam party.
On our recent New Mexico vacation we spend just one full day in Santa Fe before returning home. But we saw and did a lot in that one afternoon, and one full day afterward.
The monsoon was going on so every afternoon it would cloud up and rain. Usually just a little bit but on our final evening we had to call the hotel for help so they sent their shuttle. Saved us from getting soaking wet.
Santa Fe is a mixture of the old and the new. I remember as a little kid living in Coyote and mom would take us shopping in Santa Fe. Those art galleries and fancy shops that are there now? They used to be Woolworths, JC Penney’s, Western Auto. Lots of tourists back then as well but Santa Fe was a town where regular people lived.
It’s got some great museums. This is the courtyard at the New Mexico Museum of Art.
And food. I forget just how much I like New Mexican food until I go back. How about some chicken enchiladas with green chili sauce for lunch?
And history? Ancient history and modern history. I saw this little plaque at the back of a store. 109 East Palace was the address where everybody who worked at Los Alamos during the World War I first reported to duty. I read a book about the goings on, 109 East Palace: Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos by Jennet Conant I love reading about the makings of the Atomic Bomb way back when. It was a huge nationwide effort and involved lots of people. My mother worked as a secretary at the Hanford Nuclear Works in Washington which used a reactor to produce plutonium and chemical processing to enrich it. Plutonium from Hanford was used in the first atomic explosion in New Mexico at the Trinity site.
The Saint Francis of Asis Catholic Church is located in the northern New Mexico town of Ranchos de Taos. It was constructed between 1772 and 1816 and is still an active church. It is built of adobe and the church members spend two weeks in June ever year remudding the exterior with a mixture of mud and straw. If you look closely you can see the straw in the exterior walls. It is considered to be Spanish Colonial architecture.
The church has been a favorite subject for years by artists and photographers including Georgia O’Keefe and Ansel Adams. (Check the links for images of the art work.) The artists have focused almost exclusively on the back of the church which has three massive beehive shaped buttresses. I guess that I am not artist because I find the front of the church to be much more interesting.
The interior is gorgeous. The altar looks beautiful. I brightened the image above so you could see but did not advance beyond the closed entrance door. It was almost pitch dark and did not want to disturb anyone who might be in there praying.
Dynamic Auto Painting rendering.
I’ve been seeing this church almost my whole life. Whenever we went through the area when I was a kid we would stop and look. I think it has an almost magical presence. It had been almost 30 years since I last saw it though before our recent trip and I still love it.
Continuing our saga of our New Mexico vacation. We got to Red River in the beautiful Sangre de Cristo Mountains and didn’t waste any time hiking the day after we got there. I hadn’t been in the area in 50 years and back then I wasn’t a hiker. So we consulted the redriver.org website and the alltrails app and kind of converged on the nearby Columbine Creek Trail as a good moderate trail. Plus it was only about five miles from town so off we went.
We didn’t see much in the way of critters but there were wildflowers. I had my Merlin App going and it captured the Northern Flicker in a particular section of the trail and not much anywhere else. I caught glimpses of it but not enough to feel comfortable adding it to my “life list.” Those dang birds need to sit still for at least 30 seconds for me to get my camera out, adjust the settings, focus and all that to get a good photo. Those little birds are so rude they way they hop skip and jump all over the place. Just call me Karen and point me to the manager.
Gotta tell you walking through an aspen forest got my feels going. Did that all the time when I was just a kid. Haven’t hardly done it since. I love it. Brings back lots of memories.
And a cold, clear mountain stream. We have lots of water in eastern Oklahoma (and I love it here) but very few clear running streams.
Just one more time on the aspens. Promise!!
The trail crossed Columbine Creek several times. The Forest Service put in these deluxe bridges. I cannot imagine the amount of work to put the bridges in and then keep them maintained.
And I loved the rock cliffs.
I googled the heck of “Quetta” so I don’t know who this person is but they obviously loved the trails.
Here’s two of my hiking team.
We didn’t make it to the promised waterfall at the end of the trail. We were getting low on water and we are flatlanders playing around at over 10,000 feet so we turned around. There will be plenty of waterfalls in our future. So headed back to the trailhead and got there safe and sound. So we got four miles in for the day.
And now a blast from the past.
Our hike reminded me that when I was in high school our family hiked somewhere along the highway in one of the Forest Service campgrounds. I remember dad pointing up to a mountain and saying that there was lots of molybdenum in the rock and that it had been mined there for decades. The mineral is used to harden steel in everything from bulldozer blades to mountain bikes and is very valuable. So I looked it up and molybdenum had indeed been mined there for a long time and the biggest mine, owned by Chevron Mining, was an open pit mine right across the road from the campground where our trailhead was. I got on google maps and the mine looks a lot worse than it looks from the road. It is a huge open pit mine.
Chevron shut the mine down in 2014 and settled with the State and the Feds for over $140 million in cleanup costs from the damage of runoff from the mine into the Red River. Chevron is still cleaning it up and is still helping the downstream village of Questa deal with transitioning their economy from mining to something else. Mining is necessary for our modern life but cleaning it up is an expensive, lengthy process. I think they are pretty close to completing the project.
Hey I apologize for digressing but I found the mine fascinating and was amazed at how much damage it caused to the surrounding area.
One day last week I started out from Turkey Mountain’s upper parking lot and had to check this device. I’d love to have one in case anybody is wondering what to get me for back to school! I’m not going to school but you can buy it for me anyways.
And then I went tot the north end of the parking lot and took this shot of downtown Tulsa. Turkey Mountain is a true urban wilderness. It’s only about six miles to downtown.
And then I took the new Three Pillars Trail over to the Three Ponds. I keep hearing they are the three sisters or the three pearls. So I don’t know about those names but they are definitely ponds so I am using that for now.
They are going to make some great season photographs.
Nice reflections everywhere you look.
I left the ponds and continued westward when I found this fella. I posted this same photo on my Saturday’s Critters post last Saturday. It’ a rat snake, and they are not venomous.
And then went and checked on my most previous employer’s pipeline they are building through the park.
They are doing a good job. The right of way is in good shape and the welders, pipefitters, equipment operators, x-ray hands, and inspectors are not out and about wandering all over the place, poaching deer and fishing the ponds. At least not during working hours.
I’m told that they are going to be done pretty soon and they are going to mulch the right of way and plant a wildflower mix. That sounds good to me.
I went a little bit further and find a couch to relax on. It looked a little firm to me so I just kept moving.
Went down a side trail and had to double back. The pipeline folks were excavating and didn’t want any tourists or know it all retired pipeline engineers.
I passed this little mess. Years ago, Turkey Mountain was an oilfield and the workers had trash pits they covered up. Well they are getting exposed now and the old trash is coming to the surface.
And then I went back to my car. I was hot and tired. It is warm here in Tulsa.
The other day, the moon here was 99% full and we had some scattered clouds so I took some photos. This one looks like the moon has a face, featuring a split lips. Reminds me of a cat actually so I guess this isn’t a man on the moon it’s a cat or man in the moon kind of thing.
We had some color in the sky the other day so I launched the old drone. This is looking roughly south of northwest from our house. About 40 meters up.
And this is a similar view looking straight west at the same elevation.
And this is roughly southwest.
And looking straight east. One can see the faintest tints of pink in the clouds. I love reverse sunsets.
And that is it this week. I am linking with Skywatch Friday. Come check them out.
