Tag Archives: Skywatch Friday

Armchair Skywatching

For whatever reasons I haven’t been out much since the first part of this month. Too cold, too rainy, blah blah blah. I’ve got lots of excuses.

The above is a tree in my backyard. We are still waiting on a new fence. I’ve paid the guy a deposit now we just need it to stop raining.

This photo and the two following are of Tulsa’s Own Park just northwest of downtown Tulsa. I think it may be Tulsa’s oldest park. It has fallen by the wayside. The city keeps the grass mowed, picks up litter, and chases off vagrants and such but it has been abandoned to the neighborhood and they seem to love it.

It is such an old place and feels settled in. And over the years their have been lots of geocaches planted there so I was there in December hunting down a couple of new ones.

And I love the pond. It is home to quite a menagerie of waterfowl. I think many of them are escaped or released pets.

This is a re-edit (all the photos in the post are re-edits) of a shot I took during out trip in December to Colorado Springs. We drove through the Oklahoma panhandle. You can see forever out there. I found the big sky and lonely highway exhilarating.

This is a tree on a hilltop at Tulsa’s Bales Park from a hike I took a year ago. (Another re-edit.) It was a dark, cold day and I had the place to myself. You cannot really tell from the photo but the hill in the background is the Turkey Mountain Urban Wilderness Area. Between Bales Park and Turkey Mountain is a four lane limited access highway, US 75.

Speaking of Turkey Mountain this is re-edited photo of some sort of bicycle obstacle built there by volunteers. Back in the day, Turkey Mountain was pretty wild. The powers that be lightly administered it. They certainly didn’t build and maintain sustainable trails like they do now. So people, especially the bicyclists, would haul in lumber and build their own features. All over the place. Most of it was pretty rickety. It was wonder nobody died. At least I don’t think anybody died. If they did, I think the other bikers might have just dug a shallow hole, dragged the pour soul into it, covered them up, toasted him or her with a beer and kept on keeping on. Snitches get stitches is their motto.

I’m linking to My Corner of the World and Skywatch Friday. Check them out!!

Skywatch Friday – Cold Snowy Spell

It has been a week! We have had some wicked cold weather and a little bit of snow.

Last Friday, my brother got sick and we spent hours in the emergency room. Turns out he had covid. So they bundled him up and sent back to his residence where he is being isolated for a while. I went home and tested negative but have been self isolating for five days. So stay at home, no gym nor anything else where people are. Low single digits inhibited me from doing anything outside so I’ve been a couch potato.

I had this bright idea of taking the drone out to various places around town and launching it. First though the batteries were all low and it took hours to charge them up. I went on a little test run in the back yard and I got just a little ways up in the air and the drone went crazy and one of the motors started barking. The screen on the controller said “Too Cold” so I nixed that but I got a few photos showing the snow in the neighborhood.

Normally with as sunny as it is our one inch would be gone but it is sticking around because it is so cold.

It took me about 20 minutes to push the snow off the driveway and walkways. If I didn’t it would turn to ice. Now that is really fun to deal with, especially when you are 68 years old!

So tomorrow I’ll self test and I’ll be free again!! (If I test negative) Plus it will be warmer outside. Probably going to be too muddy to go hiking ethically but I’ll find something else to do. Don’t you worry!! And my brother is doing okay as well. He is apartment is kind of small and he is going stir crazy. They will be testing him and if negative, he’ll be free as well! Being free is good in my book.

The other thing that happened last week is that I got notified by the internet company that hosts my blog that I had way too much traffic on it and it wasn’t coming from my friendly global blogging friends. It was coming under attack by evildoers! Traffic was up by a factor of 47,000!! They said fix it or we are going to shut you off. They were nice about it though. They sent a bunch of data on what was happening and gave me seven tasks I could do that would probably work.

Hey, couldn’t go anywhere, so the next day I went through the seven things with a sense of dread. Computerspeak is like a foreign language but with the links they provided I was able to tighten up security and upgrade things and it only took a few hours so I asked them to evaluate again and they said I fixed it and complemented me on how quickly I got-er done. Whew, big sigh of relief. My motto on the blog is if it is not broke don’t fix it. Turns out that is not too smart.

So that is about it for this week! I am linking with Skywatch Friday and My Corner of the World.

Road Trip Skywatch

On our recent trip to Colorado to see family after Christmas we took a southern route through the Oklahoma panhandle and New Mexico to avoid some snowy weather. Tell you what the panhandle has some big skies and great vistas. Heather took over the driving for a while so I took some pics with my phone.

Sorry for the internal reflections!!

We drove by this train in the late afternoon. I loved the late afternoon light on the boxcars. The line was at least a mile long.

And a little bit later we got a good sunset.

And a great reverse sunset looking east via the mirror.

I just love it when Heather drives. I get to take photos and I also regale here with fascinating (to me) information via Wikipedia on all the small towns we go through. I don’t know why but she always turns up the volume on the radio when I am trying to give her a good tidbit of information. She keeps saying stuff like “I don’t care.” Oh well. Not much she can do about it since she is driving, right?

I’m linking with Skywatch Friday.

2024 New Year’s Day Family Hike

After our recent post Christmas trip to Colorado Springs to see family, we felt the need to get outside and walk a little bit so we ventured up to the North Woods segment of the Tulsa’s Oxley Nature Center to get a couple miles of fresh air and sunshine.

It was a great day. Cool, sunny, and very little wind. The North Woods loop is very pedestrian friendly, flat, no rocks, and no bicycles allowed. We did encounter a couple of friendly bikers. I wasn’t even irritated. The ground was solid so they were not messing up the trail and they were good natured and there were only two of them.

I brought my “good” camera with the 300 mm lens hoping I would see some birds or other critters. I saw flashes of birds and birds way up high, and birds in very thick underbrush. I saw a group of four or five deer running parallel to us about a 100 yards away, but no, no photos on the trail. I got some grainy duck photos of waterfowl on a pond. I will post them tomorrow on my Saturday’s Critters post.

Very rarely do we I see anybody on this particular trail but we saw four or five groups on our outing. That was okay. Lots of room for everybody still.

Captured some fungi images! They are easy, they don’t hide.

A good time was had by all!!

I am linking up with Skywatch Friday and My Corner of the World.

A Walk in the Woods

Last week it rained for a whole day or two then it got cold. Turkey Mountain was closed to bikers but open for hikers. So off I went.

As usual I traversed a combination of legacy trails and new trails.

The new trails, thanks to their water shedding design were not muddy at all. By now the trails are very hard packed almost like pavement. The old trails were okay but a bit muddy at times.

It is amazing. There are no guards at the trails or rangers or anything and yet the bikers stayed away. I think most of the users are invested in the trails now and comply with the requests to stay off after rains. Bikers especially turn out huge for the trail work days and really buy into keeping the sustainable trails in good shape.

So on my hike I only saw a few other people, all of them hikers. No bikers nor signs of bikers at all.

I love trees in the wintertime. We get to see their bones and the results of them stretching up to the sky to get some sun.

I also love seeing the dead wood in the woods. You couldn’t buy a sculpture like this at any price. Turkey Mountain is an old growth forest. They don’t cut down old snags and they don’t clear the woods of them either. Sure they have done a little bit of controlled burns and mulching and their clear trails of fallen limbs and trees but they just push the wood off to the side of the trail. Dead trees make great habitat for all sorts of little critters.

I love the rocks on Turkey Mountain. Above is from a large outcropping called Rock City.

My boots got a little muddy.

And I had a great time. All by myself.

Kind of reminds me of a line from Mary Oliver’s “How I Go to the Woods”

“…If you have ever gone to the woods with me, I must love you very much.”

Three plus miles at my own pace.

I am linking with Skywatch Friday and My Corner of the World

Where Is It?

I’m a geocacher and have been at it for years. Geocaching is a combination real life/online hobby where one goes and finds caches out in the world hidden by others. Check out my Geocaching 101 post and Geocaching.com for more information.

I got a notification from geocaching.com about a new cache nearby so I went to check it out. It was in a patch of dense woods with no trails or anything. I had anticipated that so I did not wear my “good” clothes to go find it. Too many thorns and sticks that can rip clothes otherwise.

So I got pretty far in and thinking, “this is ridiculous” so I did a 360 video to show how dense the woods are with the multitude of skinny closely packed trees.

I went in a little further and found this old rotten wreath. This could be considered a “geobeacon” or just a decoy. The cache is supposedly located within a few feet of it but it shows to be very tiny. So I couldn’t find it even though I spent about twenty minutes looking for it. And it was getting dark and a little cold as the sun went down so I “plugged and abandoned” as we say in the energy industry and left the premises.

However, as I emerged from the woods I was treated to a great sunset. Sometimes it’s all about the hunt is what I think. Some you find, some you don’t but it’s all fun.

I’m linking with My Corner of the World and Skywatch Friday

A Late Autumn Hike

I went on a late afternoon hike recently at Turkey Mountain. They are putting a new sign up. Kind of cool in that it is also a topographic map of the park. I think maybe they are going to make it into a planter of some sort.

I took the Lo Chi trail which goes downhill to the Arkansas River. It passes this beaver pond on the way down.

And the trail goes under this flyover for one of the downhill bicycle runs. I guess this is technically a table top because you don’t have to catch air. But you can if you want. A real flyover would be a gap. Talking to the bikers they have their own language. Many older people like me would “roll over” this rather than try and jump.

And I found this baby backhoe that the contractors use to build trails. I’ve lost track on the new trails. This looks like they are building a new trail already.

Lo Chi doesn’t get as much use as some of the other new trails. I only saw one other person on my two miles outing.

And the sun started setting. I was on the east side of the ridge so it immediately got a little cooler.

We still have some pretty good fall color on the mountain.

And some more color. I walked a short segment of the RiverParks bicycle trail as part of my route.

Only two miles but hey I had a good time.

Back at the parking lot, these two women had set up their apparatus on one of the pavilions and were having a lot of fun twirling around. I don’t know what you call this but it looks challenging.

Pretty darn athletic is what I thought. They would climb up to the top of the pole and invert with the their legs holding them up. I couldn’t do that in a million years. Got to have a strong core for just start plus not get dizzy twirling round and round upside down.

Changing course, one morning in our back yard.

Found this giant Santa Claus inflatable in a nearby neighborhood.

And we are slowly getting our house decorated for Christmas.

And after a long hiatus I started doing jigsaw puzzles again on my ipad. I love doing them even though they take a lot of time. A great advantage is that you can’t lose any pieces and I use the option to orient the pieces in the right direction. Plus the texture of cardboard gives me the heebie jeebies and so I avoid that as well. And! there is no table with the puzzle on it when you are not working on it.

And today (December 7) is Pearl Harbor Day. Let’s not forget the heroes that day.

And, I am linking with Skywatch Friday!

Skywatch Friday – Black Friday Edition

We had the full Beaver Moon recently on a very cold clear night. I always love the full moon.

We still have some fall color to go with our blue skies.

I hope everybody had a great Thanksgiving. Did you go shopping on Black Friday. I went on a hike in a secludeed area of Turkey Mountain here in Tulsa.

Saw some great sights, took a lot of photographs.

Got on some rugged legacy trails and then on some of the newer twisty turny trails.

I encountered four other people on my hike with is four more than what I usually see in this part of the park. I only went about two miles. but it was great.

I am linking with Skywatch Friday

Skywatch Friday – Finally Home

I’m done with posting about my travels for now. So these are some sights since I’ve stayed home .

The full, or almost full moon, in late September.

Old rock church in midtown Tulsa. The sanctuary is now abandoned but it is connected to a more modern sanctuary that got taken over by a church from the suburbs. It’s all confusing to me but I love to see buildings including church buildings preserved and repurposed.

This is the nearby sanctuary. Not very new, I’m guessing mid 50’s Mid Century Modern.

I’ve been flying my drone as well especially when we get weather. My little lightweight drone gets blown away by winds so I have to be careful.

I had to be really careful for this shot. A front was moving through so I didn’t get very high at all.

I encountered a glider at a monarch butterfly event. I guess you call these things sail planes now.

Another “weather” shot in our neighborhood green space in September.

So that’s it for this week. I’m linking with Skywatch Friday.

Pensacola Pier Skywatch

After our visit to the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, we drove to the Pensacola pier for lunch and sightseeing.

Beautiful skies, almost too beautiful. We were eating outside and the restaurant asked us to move inside. There were two storms headed toward us.

Both of them missed us but I took photos of the resulting skies. I’m not afraid of rain, I am really afraid of lightning though so I was careful. Hear it fear, see it flee it is my motto.

Nothing like a good storm coming through for energy and clean air.