Sunday I decided to explore a new area with Logan. It is the land west west of Chandler Park is far northwest Tulsa. I was inspired by the facebook posts of TrailZombie Ken who is my guide pretty much for anything having to do with trails and trailrunning in Oklahoma.
We start out at the very southwest end of Chandler Park and cross the gate and head down the road. The first thing you run into is this sign. This is the Compass Industries Landfill EPA Superfund Site. A gazillion dollars was spent cleaning up “…620,000 cubic yards of solid, liquid and sludge wastes, including acids, caustics, solvents and potentially carcinogenic materials” in a former limestone quarry. The cleanup was paid for by the polluters themselves but all that stopped in 1995 and now we taxpayers get to pay for cleanups. I guess because it is unfair to ask the polluters to pay the expenses. It might cut into their campaign contributions budget or something.
We go a little further and we find the that the fence has been breached in a major way. I wonder what kind of morons trespass out there on a regular basis?
Shortly thereafter the trail gets away from the site and continues on west. We only saw one other person during our outing. Turkey Mountain is great but on nice weekends some of the main trails get crowded and Logan doesn’t like the constant bikers coming up behind us. No traffic problems at Chandler Park, yet.
And then it got a little rocky and I spent 40 fruitless minutes looking for a geocache and we continued our trek until the trail looped around to Avery drive.
We took a little break and then decided to head back on a different route.
If it looks steep, it is.
Just ask Logan, he’ll tell you.
We got into some of rock formations that make Chandler popular with the local bouldering and climbing enthusiasts. We are not into any of that.
Logan took a picture of the old man in full nerd regalia standing on a rock.
So it was a nice easy out and back introduction. I can see when daylight savings time returns that I’ll be coming out here some to do my Wednesday night runs. The area is lots bigger than Turkey Mountain but literally about 1% as many people. I’ll be learning the trails and looking forward to it.
Timely column today in the Tulsa World: Do we even need Chandler Park? I say yes!!
Have you been anywhere new lately?