A short venture into the wonderland known as the Westside YMCA

I met a couple of friends today over at the Westside  YMCA to hike a little and just look around. We walked around Lake Logan, and I tried to get a good picture of some mallards on the pond. 

By the time I got my camera on and pointed, most of them had swam behind a small island. 


I maneuvered closer but must have sounded like a moose crashing through the thicket, because they vacated the premises.

This small finger of the lake is unnoticed to most trail runners and mountain bikers, but is a beautiful place nonetheless.

On the way back to the main trail, I found this birds nest uninhabited but in perfect working order. I gave it a wide enough berth so as to not disturb it. What might seem like a useless sapling is home to another creature. Visiting the urban wilderness is a privilege, and up-heaving it is just plain wrong.

We wandered uphill around the upper pond, and into the woods, up the hill,, meeting a couple of trail runners and a mountain biker enjoying the trails on this cool overcast day. We found some old faded orange ribbons left possibly from a past trail race or mountain bike race, and gathered it up as well as some other litter.

A water bottle, an old pop can, a FULL CAN OF BEER UNOPENED (notice the big smile on Mitch's face), and quite a bit of old ribbon.

 Oh, and a dead fox. I'm not sure how it died. [A good photographer would not have chopped a head off   :-/   ]

I told my friends I was gonna try one more time to shoot the ducks. (Of course I meant photographing them!) They were again on the upper part of Lake Logan, but flew to the other side of the lake when they saw me coming.

You have to zoom in real close to see them. I liked this reflection pic, so I walked again around the lake to get another reflective pic. 

This is the upper pond--almost completely still. All of the above pics are on the Westside YMCA property, which for decades has hosted hundreds of kids each summer in it's day camps, creating the ideal summertime environment for kids and teens. Tulsa needs to remember what a special place this is.