Turkey mountain on July 4th

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Tulsa's own Turkey Mountain Trails.

On July 4th, I went walking the trails, a great many of them at Tulsa's Turkey Mountain nature preserve. I saw some cool things, and discovered that I'm not a young man any more. I actually had to stop three times in the 5 mile hike up hills and over rocks and fallen trees. It was a great cardio work out, and I'm thinking that I should do it more often. I haven't seen trails this tough anywhere else in the area. I even got a look at the part of the park where the eagles roost when they come to Tulsa. Keep in mind I don't really like the pictures. I used my camera phone because I had not expected to take this side trip. It was something I just did.

And now, on with the show:

This is is Tulsa from the entrance to the trails. Now, this picuture sucks. It's from my cellphone, but I didn't have my other one near by.	What you are looking at is the basic trail. It goes up. It goes down. There are rocks and trees and moss and it was very green. There were, at times as much as a 20 degree grade. Yep. Cardio! I knew I was alive.
This is my brain. This is my brain doing an impression of a mushroom The shiny thing on the back is a dime, used for reference to size. There were 3 or 4 of them in an area away from the main trail. Little fairy folk!	This is a Nice little yellow mushroom. I found about 4 patches of them.


These are little red button mushrooms. I only found these two. I suspect the others were hiding.	I found this little butterfly on the trail. It wasn't dead. I don't think it was. Actually, I'm hoping it wasn't. I did like the colors, though.
Mossy rocks were a standard. I found them all over.	Off in the distance, in the middle of the picture, you can see the old Camelot hotel, which is scheduled for demolition. It's about 8 miles from my location.
More river, but I liked the picture.
Yep. It's a rocky wall. It stretches about 100 feet left and right, and is about 15 foot high. It was very interesting in the way it seemed I was standing on a part of the mountain that had just slid down from this wall.	Rocky, rocky, rocky. Big rocks. Little rocks. Lots of shale and granite.
This was my favorite part. Well, one of them. The trail takes a serious right turn where these two very large stones meet. The far rock was much taller than I was and seemed to be the end of the trail, but....	And here's the other side, looking back. The green from the North, mossy side is very evident on the big rock to the left.
This is a tree, though a very blurry picture of a tree. If you look directly below the very center of the picture, you'll see a large burl. I figured it made the tree look pregnant.	This was actually an accident of my phone, but it turned out rather interesting. This is a milkweed, fully bloomed and it was in credibly intricate in design, with delicate loops and little fuzzy seeds. My camera caught it and reflected the light from it to give it a very ethereal look.