Couldn’t go that way today.
In our area, the South Canadian Valley is broad and flat with several large prairies and not much elevation change on the tributaries. Riding north on Midwest Boulevard brings me across the river and alongside for a few miles. Eventually it curves away to the east and I immediately hit the watershed that separates it from the Deep Fork. That comes around Hefner Road. I’ve been feeling the need for a few brutal hills and I knew I could find them near Lake Arcadia, but I wanted to see the dam side. Obviously that didn’t happen today, as the image on the upper left shows.
Getting there meant I turned east on Memorial Road and hit the hills right away. The Turner Turnpike angles east and just a bit northward, so it drifts across Memorial at around Douglas Boulevard, as shown in the image to the right.
The main route continues up the hill to the left, northward a ways, then right again until we get to the intersection of what is then NE 150th and Post Road. Aside from the closed dam road, there were a couple of interesting sights up that way. I thought this water spilling across the sign at the entrance to Sweetwater lakeside development was pretty nifty.
Next door to that was this very old stone house. Judging from the design, I’d say it was there long before the road was paved.
Post Road gave me serious hills, a very gratifying workout. This view on the left looks back across the Turner Turnpike whence I had come.
And this being still the Deep Fork watershed, it was like that for a couple more miles. Eventually I came back over the top of the watershed between the Deep Fork and North Canadian valleys. While this little dog barked and chased me, all it took was stopping and he ran to hide under the stile.
As I dropped down into the North Canadian Valley, I spotted another ancient farm house (below left). I’d seen it from NE 122nd some months ago, back when I still lived in Choctaw. However, it was cloudy and darkish and a heavy mist in the air made it impossible to shoot with my little pocket camera.
We are looking back north up Post Road alongside that house where I had just left that little yapping dog.
As I hit NE 122nd, I turned back west and noticed that the new supreme landmark for OKC was just barely visible in the hazy distance several miles to the south-southwest.
Sadly, Devon is an energy company invested mostly in petroleum, so that tower will be a little more thinly populated soon as massive layoffs hit from the drop in oil prices.
It was a nice quiet ride down Douglas for awhile until it dead ends at Britton Road. I’ve been through here several times before and it remains a peaceful area for riding. Eventually I got back to Midwest Boulevard. Riding up the south bank above the river where all that reconstruction work is going on, I spotted these two houses. The first is obviously occupied (left).
While there is a fence on the south side that divides them, the mapping services give this second, abandoned house the same street address (right).
You can probably just make out that an entire window is missing on that left end of the structure. Spooky enough?
My legs were complaining about the hills. As it was a fairly low traffic ride back to the house, I could hear them all the way home.
