Tag Archives: Turkey Mountain

Skywatch Friday – Back on the Trail Edition

To recap, about two weeks ago I slipped and fell while hiking. I’ve done that a lot but this time my knee and the rest of my body went different directions and I was sore. So I hiked back to my car, went home, took a shower and then my wife took me orthopedic urgent care where they took xrays, said that my new knee was in good shape, wrapped my knee in a wrap patted me on my head said go see your surgeon.

I talked to my surgeons PA and said no damage to the knee so released me to do whatever as I felt able. I didn’t do much for a couple days and then gradually started getting more active.

My first hike was a mall walk where I saw that rugby shirts are a thing again, along with earth colors. Oh well.

I graduated to slow walks at local parks. Much better!

I love this fence.

And then back to Turkey Mountain for hikes on trails that are flat and don’t have technical feature.

This is the best vista on Turkey Mountain.

And then little bit longer hikes on more challenging terrain.

I found this bike jump on my a hike. Mountain bikers are crazy. You jump over the trail and onto a very steep slope on the other side. That’s a big nope for me. I have yet to ride a bike on Turkey Mountain.

I love this trail bridge over the dam at the YMCA at Turkey Mountain. Tulsa has the best fall weather of any place I have ever lived. Cool night, warm days, blue skies. Sign me up for all you have.

My beautiful wife Heather had an afternoon free, so we did a two mile hike at Turkey Mountain on the Sanctuary area.

I love old appliances on the trail. Turkey Mountain is an old farming, ranching, and oilfield area so there are lots things to look at that are interesting.

And at one spot, there is an old oil well with rods sticking out of the ground. I reminded Heather that we had been here before, 11 years ago. We were on an outlaw trail. The land was private but some bikers and hikers blazed a few trails through the tract and Heather, Me, and son Logan checked it out.

Heather and Logan found them selves an #oilwell on #turkeymountain #tulsa #oklahoma #igersok

So this is wife and son from nearly eleven years ago. Except, now RiverParks owns the land and it is legal to be on it.

Next up on the agenda. The Tulsa Area Geocachers are having their Fall Fest Geocaching Event at Lake Okmulgee on Saturday, and Sunday, the Tulsa Urban Wilderness Coalition is at Chandler Park partnering with the county on a trail maintenance and a cleanup day there. I’ll be at both events.

I am linking with Skywatch Friday

Saturday’s Critters – On the Trail and at Home

A robin I captured on Turkey Mountain Friday afternoon.

Another robin in the same area on a different pass yesterday.

Ducks on the fishing pond at Lafortune Park earlier in the week.

Two separate sculptures working together at the Scheel’s Store at the mall.

Lizzie the cat, grooming Sadie to dog in a tender moment.

Kodie and Sadie wanting in!!

Sadie on my lap while I was watching television the other night.

Finally a 21 second video of other critter moments during the week. Featuring the bird cam, a sparrow, a dove, an angry squirrel, and me and Sadie playing fetch. Yep, all that fits in 21 seconds so pay attention!!

I’m linking with Saturday’s Critters.

Saturday’s Critters – Carolina Wren on the Trail

I was out hiking on Tulsa’s Turkey Mountain Urban Wilderness Area, with my “good camera”, and I heard a bird call. The Merlin App said it was a Carolina Wren. So I just stopped and stood still and was looking around and I saw two little birds that I thought could be them. They are kind of flighty so I just waited until I had a clear shot and took several and this one was the best one of the lot. I’ve learned to use manual focus when I am shooting bird photos in trees and brush otherwise the camera will focus on miscellaneous twigs, branches and leaves. I know it is grainy, it is highly cropped. But I will take. Carolina Wrens are beautiful birds.

I think that I am slowly getting better spotting and photographing birds.

I am linking with Saturday’s Critters

Skywatch Friday – From Here to the Moon and Back

Here: Taken on a recent morning hike with a friend through The Sanctuary at Tulsa’s Turkey Mountain Urban Wilderness Area. It’s kind of an isolated part of Turkey Mountain so we don’t generally see anybody early in the morning.

To the Moon!: The Full Harvest Moon for a couple nights ago. Clear skies in Tulsa made this one easy. Social media blew up as thousands of people posted their Full Moon shots that night. I loved it.

And back: From an October 2019 trip to Jackson, Wyoming. My wife and I hiked all over Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Park. What a beautiful place that is.

I’m linking with Skywatch Friday

Dedicating “The Sanctuary” at Turkey Mountain

Over a week ago, several dozen trail lovers and various politicos gathered on Turkey Mountain to dedicate a new area. The Sanctuary with 88 acres (some sources say 90) and six miles of trails. The contractor has been working on the area since last fall and it is now fully opened up. It is on Turkey Mountain but across the street from the main area of the park.

The trails were built on land already owned by Tulsa RiverParks through a $2 million grant from the Daryl and Julie Christner Foundation. Above is a family representative talking about how his dad loved being outdoors. I saw him later leading a group of mountain bikers on the trails.

I was standing right next to Oklahoma’s Lieutenant Governer, Mike Pinell. Rather than take point blank photo, I took a picture of his cowboy boots. So I am on oil and gas twitter (or X if you must) and one of the ongoing things there, tongue in cheek, is that round toed boots are lame and square toed boots are cool. You can see he is wearing round toes. I elected not to call him out on that. (True confession, I have two pairs of square toe boots and one of round toes.) His big mission as lieutenant governor is publicizing and pushing Oklahoma and he does a good job of it.

He talked about how everybody is always welcome at Turkey Mountain. He also said that Tulsa is the most philanthropic city in America and how many public private partnerships go on here. He mentioned that Oklahoma has 34 sovereign nations within our borders (talking about the Native American tribes) and twelve ecosystems.

So the speeches were limited, and then everyone was invited to hike a quarter mile to treehouse for refreshments.

So off we went. I had a peanut butter cookie and chatted with a few people I knew.

That’s the heaviest duty treehouse I have ever seen.

I studied on the posted map a little bit and decided I was going to go on a hike.

I love the trails. They are all single track and some of them are pretty rocky. So you have to kind of pick your way carefully, especially if you are an old codger.

It was a bright sunny day, and there are lots of trees so there were lots of shadows.

I head lots of birds but they wouldn’t come out and sit still for a photo.

At one of the trail hubs I found this headboard. I was thinking. I have seen that before!!

I saw it in 2014 when this was all privately owned and some outlaw trail builders built their own trails on the property. Take a look to the left and behind the headboard.

It’s an oil well! A relic of Turkey Mountain’s past. It looked familiar as well.

So here is my wife and son at the same well eleven years ago.

So we were pioneers of the Sanctuary. Somebody got hurt crossing the road back to the main part of Turkey Mountain and the owners of the property posted it and so exploration of the property came to an end.

Enough of past history. I finished my hike and went through the moongate at the main entrance. I just love moon gates.

So a little over two miles. A friend and I hiked about three miles on a different route a few days later.

At least one Tulsa News Station had a crew there. Channel 6 news. Check the link for several videos.

I am linking with My Corner of the World.

Saturday’s Critters – Indigo Bunting and More

I went on a hike this week at Turkey Mountain Urban Wilderness. I was rewarded with my first photos ever of an indigo bunting. I had seen them before but they are very flighty and usually behind a lot of brush. I come upon this perched on branch overhanging a trail. It sat there while I got my camera ready and I was able to take of shots.

They are such beautiful birds. We have painted buntings in Oklahoma but I have never seen one. I’d sure like to see and photography one out in the wild.

On the same hike I encountered this curious deer. We just kind of stood and looked at each other for a minute or two and it let me get a few photos of it. It never did run off. I finally walked away from it.

And now for the movies!!

First up is a compilation of birds from the past week captured on my camera feeder. Note that it takes literally about 200 videos a day. Almost all of them of doves, which although beautiful, are not interesting to me. With the use of habanero laced bird food, the squirrels pretty much ignore the feeder except for a very few who chomp down all the food they can, habanero or no.

This second movie is our rescue terrier Sadie romping around the backyard with the zoomies. She is the happiest little dog I have ever seen.

That is it for this week. I am linking with Saturday’s Critters

Skywatch Friday – Urban and Other Skies

I fired up the drone again and flew over the backyard in between rain storms. This is looking to the west. You can see everything is very green in Tulsa right now with all the rain we are getting.

A stopped in traffic, crepuscular ray shot one afternoon.

And another shot from almost the same spot yesterday.

The City of Broken Arrow has a Veteran’s Park with all sorts of monuments in honor of veterans. This is the “War at Home” Memorial. It honors veterans who came home from war but committed suicide later. It’s a huge issue. War is hard on people mentally and emotionally and we need to make sure they are cared for when they come home even though their wounds are not physical.

And I went on a short hike at our Turkey Mountain Urban Wilderness Area. The John and Kate Kaiser YMCA tucked to the very northwest corner of the Wilderness Area. I am a Y member so I just check in at the office and take off. I hardly ever see anyone else on the trails there. It’s pretty remote from the rest of Turkey Mountain.

Skywatch Friday

Big News for Turkey Mountain

The RiverParks Authority had some big news for Turkey Mountain on Monday. They invited everybody to show for an announcement. Turns out that the Bank of Oklahoma is donating two million dollars to a visitor center on Turkey Mountain. RiverParks only has about six million bucks left to raise.

It’s going to be a visitor center and office for Turkey Mountain all in one. Right now they office in high rise building just out of downtown Tulsa.

(Note photo stolen from Tulsa Urban Wilderness Coalition facebook site)

They also had free tshirts as a giveaway and snowcones. Better not stand in my way for either one of those. Four members of the Tulsa Urban Wilderness Coalition board was there, including me.

The city fathers gave speeches patting themselves on the back about turning back a planned outlet mall on Turkey Mountain more than ten years ago. They ignored TUWC’s crucial early work (before I joined the board) but that ‘s okay, what matters is the results and we are off working on other things.

I chatted with a few people I know. It was almost old home week for people who love Turkey Mountain. When I first started coming here all they had was a dirt parking lot. The trails were deer trails or dry streams on the hillsides. There were not really any maps, you just had to learn the trails by getting on them and seeing where they went. Not very sustainable. Now we have all sorts of new designed, sustainable trails. Two big parking lots and a third under construction, and of course soon we’ll have an $8 million dollar visitor center.

And some really nice hiking bridges!!

As popular as Turkey Mountain has become, you get a half mile down the trails you don’t see very many people.

I’m linking with My Corner of the World

Skywatch Friday – On the Trail Again!

I was feeling all energetic and everything so I thought that I would go for a little hike on Tulsa’s Turkey Mountain Urban Wilderness. I probably should have gone to the gym, but I’m gymed out, Physical Therapy is all gym, and not the fun kind.

So off I went, the trails were all wet, not very muddy though but rain was in the forecast and the park warned that they might close the park to everybody if it got bad enough.

The upside of rain is that all the ponds were full. Nice to see.

I used a mixture of the new trails and the old trails. The Stay Gold and Tree Hugger respectively.

This pond was dry the last time I came by.

I was going down the trail with my Merlin app trying to figure out the birds that were singing and a mountain biker came by and said to be sure to watch out for the copperhead snake on the trail up ahead. Yes sir! Time to put the eyes on the trail and not the device.

Do you know how many sticks look like snakes!! A bunch. The thing about copperheads is that they are the slugs of the poisonous snake families. They are not vicious and once they find a spot they like, they don’t like to move, and they are hard to see. So watch where you step!

The only snake I saw was this chain snake.

This is a Skywatch Friday post so I need to have one view of the sky. Here’s the overlook on Turkey Mountain on the very southeast side of the park. That’s the Arkansas River down below. To the left are the funky old office towers that used to be the televangelist Oral Roberts hospital. (Don’t ask me why a faith healer needs a hospital.)

And then back to the parking lot. Never did see that copperhead. I am not complaining about it, just saying.

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

Skywatch Friday – Staying Home or Going Out?

I get lots of skywatch photos from my front and back yards, and that is great except…

I like getting out as well.

On our street looking east. I love this mackerel sky.

Another day, looking west again.

We have no daffodils in our yard though. Gotta drive to them.

I always love a flag snapping in a strong, cold, spring breeze.

The school where I tutor a first grader is honoring all their teachers, administrators, cafeteria workers, janitors, tutors and everyone else who helps out.

The other day the knee was feeling strong so I fired up the electric mower and got the job done.

On another day the wife and I went to a big box store and bought some cushions for our patio furniture. The cushions were cool but these roosters take a better photo. Can you believe stores let you walk in and take pictures of their stuff? Some stores say no photos but I ignore those signs.

The afternoon after I mowed, I decided to go take a hike at Turkey Mountain on a little bit more challenging trail. Only a mile long but the killer was about 300 feet of elevation change.

Here is some switchbacks on the 300 ft climb.

I loved the br

You can tell I really liked the bridge since I took two photos of it.

Staying in or Going out? You need to do both!!