My Corner – Is a Small Corner – Filling in the Gaps

On Earth Day, I manned a table at Tulsa’s Chandler Park giving out information about Earth Day, and Leave No Trace Principles and what our organization, the Tulsa Urban Wilderness Coalition is about and what we are doing.

A couple of days later I was downtown at Tulsa’s Guthrie Green during a recycling event basically doing something similar.

They entertainment and games and all that.

Then out of the corner of my eye, I saw this.

A Tesla CyberTruck!!

Your regular car people hate this thing and hold in disdain. I thought it was beautiful. Zero to 60 mph is 2.6 seconds gets my attention. Also 11,000 pounds of towing capacity. Range of 340 miles.

I could never get a feel for the truck just looking at photos. In real life it is a very tough looking vehicle.

And a huge bed. Big enough for 4’x8′ building materials. The bed is a composite material so you don’t need a bed liner.

The interior is very simple, clean and spacious.

You have a very small simple steering wheel with no stalks for turn signals and all that. Those controls are on the wheel. You got this huge screen with everything else you need. I was impressed with the vehicle. The electric vehicle haters especially hate this thing. If somebody gave me one, I’d take it.

I have already converted my lawnmower to electric battery type. My very reliable, heavy duty gas powered mower finally seized up this year after 20 years so I bought electric. I’m happy with it!! Less than half the weight, no oil, no gas, no spark plug, no changing filters. My new mower is very lightweight and makes mowing a breeze and I can mow the whole yard using less than half the charging capacity. I didn’t try to get the best, I intentionally looked for the lowest cost, with the least problems that could mow my 1/5th of an acre lot.

It’s not going to last near as long as my old gas mower. Plastic mower deck is not going to last very long I am afraid. Oh well.

I found this beautiful blue Toyota Landcruiser at my brother’s apartment parking lot. Back in the I really coveted these things. Tough looking, cool. You grow up though and look for something else. When I was a kid we lived in the White Mountains of Arizona. My dad was transferred there as part of his job with the Forest Service. One of his coworkers joined the Forest Service kind of late in life (Probably he was fifteen to twenty years younger than I am now!) He and his wife were very nice, generous, cool people. Earlier in his life he was an actor in Hollywood. He specialized in being one of a group of bad guys. He worked some on the Lone Ranger television shows. How cool is that to a kid!! Anyway he and his wife on weekends would load up their Toyota Landcruiser and drive all over the National Forest, adjacent BLM land, and other places. No instagram back in the day so they did it all for their own enjoyment. Whenever I see a Landcruiser, I think of them.

I found a truck at the gym that the Cybertruck haters would love. A massive Ford F-150 with a two tone paint job and a cool Black Widow logo. Sorry, I should have got a photo of the logo. This thing is beautiful.

I’ll stick with my humble Subaru though. For as long as it will last. It does everything I want it to do. Want to know something funny, half the vehicles at the enviro events I attend are Subarus. Here it is parked in a place I am not supposed to be in to look for a geocache. Sunday morning I went to Sapulpa, OK to look around.

This was the first cache I found. It was kind of a clever installation. What nearly got me though was the cache container was full of ants. Little buggers, just waiting for me! You can see one crawling out of the container in the video. His friends followed.

In addition to the geocaches I found I checked out old and new Route 66 landmarks. The Tee-Pee Drive in was an old drive-in that was abandoned and fell into disrepair. Somebody bought it, fixed it up really nice and put this new sign up. It is not a neon sign, it is an LED sign, Bigger, better, and uses less electricity.

This is the old Rock Creek Bridge. It is a major route 66 stop but it can no longer carry traffic. At least they haven’t torn it down yet. You can still walk across it. It is not blocking Route 66. The new Route 66 is just a hundred feet or so to the right going across a modern bridge. What you have to understand about Route 66 is that it is not just one road. It is a living road and has been modernized and rerouted continuously since it started. The different routes are called alignments. Exploring some of the old alignments can be fn

Those are some of the original pavers from the when bridge was put up in the early part of the last century.

So I puttered around a few hours and went on home!!

So that is filling in some of the gaps in My Corner of the World.

Critter Photowalk Around Lafortune Park

I posted earlier this week about a photowalk I took around Tulsa’s Lafortune Park. I saved my animal pics I captured on the walk for Saturday’s Crittes.

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One Goose by Land

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Two Geese by uh well, pond.

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A squirrel sniffing the dirt

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A Yellow Crowned Night Heron (I think, feel free to correct if I am wrong).

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And a lonely duck.

I’m linking with Saturday’s Critters

My Corner – Photowalking Lafortune Park

The other day I was feeling a little owly at the end of the day so I grabbed a camera and headed to Tulsa’s Lafortune Park to walk around it. They have a nice walking track of about three miles which is just right. It winds around a library, a high school, gardens, two golf courses, baseball fields, ponds, and several playgrounds. It’s a popular spot for walking or running in Tulsa and there is always something to see.

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The high school has this geodesic dome. I don’t know what they use it for but it is a cool sight.

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They also have this sailboat parked next to their band trailer. The boat never moves. I don’t know what the story is.

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I captured this golfer out playing a few holes. Back in the day I used to pack up my clubs and go play some. Lots of fun but it takes too much time for me. I already have too many hobbies. Plus I never was any good. I love watching the game on television.

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I ran into this trio of friends. They asked if I would take their photo so I did and sent it to them. They said they were going to get enlarged copies for their rooms. It was one of those nice interactions on the trail.

And the back side of a public library. I love the big glass windows and swooping roofline.

So I would have to say that I had a good walk. I captured more images of animals and I’ll be sharing those on Saturday’s Critters later.

My Corner of the World.

Saturday’s Critters – Tortured Poets and Pomeranians Edition

I was on a hike here in Tulsa and scared up a group of about three deer. We had a little faceoff for a while. All I had was my phone camera so you have to really look hard to see the deer. I love seeing deer on a hike!!

I captured a squirrel and some birds on my backyard trailcam a few weeks ago.

My sister Ellen, her husband Irv, and my son Logan took a little trip to Woolaroc’s Museum and Wildlife Preserve about an hour or so from Tulsa. We saw lots of critters including some bison.

They had some juveniles, “red dogs” but they wouldn’t group up. Come on guys, how about some cooperation. Move together. Look at the camera.

I have no idea what they are looking at.

And a group of deer at a Preserve Lake.

They had an animal barn and with this sad little donkeys. All donkeys look a bit sad don’t they.

And a sad little pony.

And maybe the saddest story. This guy was a longhorn cow that lived at Woolaroc and got moved to southeast Oklahoma for a time. His proud horns drooped because the grass didn’t have the minerals needed to keep them up. He’s immortalized now.

Taylor Swift dropped her new double album “Tortured Poets Department” the other day. Kodi and I listened to most of it on the back patio. Kodi loves catching rays and grooving to new tunes. I think he may be a Swifty.

I’m linking with Eileen’s Saturday’s Critters. Go check it out.

To Space and then Back to Earth

Earlier this week I headed out to the Tulsa suburb of Broken Arrow to find a specialized geocache. It was a space based Adventure Lab Cache. No container to find, just information you need to look up. It was at the Voyage Solar System Walkway. A collection of displays set up along a street showing the relative sizes and distances of the planets to the sun.

Here is the sun, looks like an overgrown basketball.

Just a few feet away is Earth. Barely bigger than a pin prick and its even smaller moon.

And 2000 feet down the street, all by itself, is Pluto. Stripped of planet status recently but still proud.

And I got a virtual postcard proving that I found it. If only virtual anything proves anything. The installation starts at an elementary school which I think is great.

And I went hiking recently on Turkey Mountain. This flyover are still scary to me. They are not for hikers, they are for bicyclists. They really do fly over them. I think all that steel would hurt if you fell off your bike.

My sister and her husband came to town. We had a fun time. One day we went Woolaroc, wildlife preserve and art museum started by Oklahoma oilman Frank Phillips who started Phillips 66 Petroleum way back when. We saw some bison and other critters. My sister is a former Park Ranger at Yellowstone so it is kind of hard to impress her.

The liked the art a lot. Lots of western artists works are hanging at Woolaroc.

I love this stained glass window.

We went to the nearby town of Bartlesville to see Frank Lloyd Wright’s Price Tower. Built for a pipeline construction company, H.C. Price who did a lot of work for Phillips 66.

BIL Irv got his photo with a big 66.

Sister Ellen did as well.

I did several years ago when I turned 66 years old.

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And a few years before that I got my brother Bob’s photo on his 66th birthday.

Speaking of birthdays, I had one early this month. You can tell I am getting kind of old. I just started my 70th year.

As a treat Heather and Logan took me to see the the Van Gogh Immersion exhibit here in Tulsa. It was very cool.

And I got a cornhole game. Stop by if you are in town we’ll have some beverages and play a few games.

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And I end with yet another Lego animal from the Tulsa Botanic Garden.

I am linking with Skywatch Friday and My Corner of the World. Thank you for stopping by!

Saturday’s Critters – Pelicans and More on the Arkansas River

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I went on a bike ride along Tulsa’s RiverParks trails the other day. I took my SuperZoom camera with me hoping that I would see something. It turns out that American White Pelicans were on the river that day. This is a group I spotted near where I started at 71st street. They were on a sandbar near the other side of the river.

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Here is a closeup of them. I find them kind of comical on land. They are very graceful in the water and flying.

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And here is five miles north at the newly reconstructed Zink Lake Dam. They were paddling around fishing.

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Another closeup.

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And maybe 50 yards downstream of the dam this group of pelicans and great blue herons were trying their luck in the shallows.

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The pelicans and herons seemed to tolerate each other’s presence pretty well.

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In the calm waters up stream of the dam a flotilla of geese were cruising.

I am linking with Eileen’s Saturday’s Critters. Go check it out.