I have said it before, and I'll say it again: Geocaching takes you places you would probably NEVER go. What does that mean to ME? Well, for one with a self-proclaimed gift for sniffing out new trailz, Hunting for these hidden canisters in the woods lends itself to finding new places to run. Such was the case this week, when, with an hour to kill, I looked for a cache not far from Turkey Mountain.

The directions sent me to a park, and looking at the iPhone map (which I bet my traditional cacher friends would say is kind of cheating), I headed down this trail into the woods.

This tight wooded path was lined with landscaping timbers, and other than a few low hanging branches, it is a peach of a running trail. I located the cache, which was 100 feet west of the trail, signed the log, and then headed back to explore these inviting trailz!! I came to a "T", and turned right and then right again. After a 1/4 mile, it dead ended. I returned, and headed down the other direction. This way proved to be more promising.

After veering south, I came out into an open field that had jeep roads here and there. This way looked good. I followed this road down and turned back east, and circled back very near the top where I was before. Then, I took another road east up and over this hill.

It would be easy to get some hill training in here, going up and down each spoke of this maze.

From there, I took this trail through a rock garden.

Another long downhill that dead-ended. Call it a hill repeat.

So I was at 2 miles--coulda been more, and I decided to head back toward my car. This trail, a different route, took me a bit northeast.

My usual cloud-shot through the trees.

An invitation from yet another trail--leading through the woods to a vista of west Tulsa. This spur also was an out-and-back.

Soon, I was on another landscape timber-lined trail. Nice running.

The trail led to this Gazebo, which was on a swatch that was a designated wetland. I think this is in conjunction with a boyscout project. Not sure though. I made it back to my car with around three miles to my credit. I think another 1/2 mile is possible here without doing a lot of repeated routes. This little gem of a trail system will be a regular part of my training.

Where IS this place, you ask??Lubell park is less than a mile due west from Turkey Mountain, as the crow flies. I plan to take the Tuesday Night Crawlers there in a couple of weeks.

The one possible negative?? I noticed a TICK climbing up my blue jeans while hunting the geocache. Shortly after that, I found two more.Before I made it back to my car, I had removed 16 of these hitchhikers. All of them went away hungry. It's been a warm winter.