Random Photos 13

A couple days ago we had some significant thunderstorms. This is what it looks like as they approached the OKC Metro from the west. The be honest, these clouds didn’t hit us; they past just a mile or two north of us. What we got came later and wasn’t this dramatic.

We have this big shopping area called “Midwest City Town Center” and this is the little park plaza in the middle of it. There are seldom any people out in this little park, so it has become a favorite prayer chapel. I just pick a bench that’s in shade during whatever time of day. It’s just about a half-mile from where I live, so it’s an easy quick ride and very pleasant with the fountain splashing to cover most noise.

Now that it’s been open for a while, I decided to visit Scissor Tail Park today. This southern section is called “Lower Scissor Tail Park” on the maps; it’s south of Downtown OKC. The area was blighted with old dangerous buildings once housing businesses that had died long ago, most of them auto salvage type places. The city management did a good job planning this, but it took forever to build, considering what’s here. This image was taken standing on the lookout hill viewing back north to Downtown OKC.

From that same lookout hill, this is the view in the opposite direction. The monster building is the Cargill Feed Mill. It’s not going anywhere. This one does vegetable-based feeds. The worst smell is perhaps the sorghum being heated and crushed, and it’s not that bad. What I wouldn’t give to get a few camera shots from the top of that thing…

This is a sports field attached to the Lower Scissor Tail Park. Aside from the soccer pitch, there is a facility that lets people use equipment to play cornhole, lawn bowling, paddle ball, basketball, etc. It’s quite a sprawling area, impossible to get everything with my camera. Of course, in the background of this shot is the Little Flower Catholic Church. It’s a rather famous charity center, with a private school, that is now blessed with a much more pleasant view.

This is the namesake of the whole park, the Scissor Tail Bridge. It’s also called the Skydancer, supposedly the translation of what some local Native American tribe called the Scissortail Flycatcher, our state bird. The bridge was built first, then the northern half of the park, and finally the southern “lower” half in the past couple of years was finished. This bridge has been refurbished at least once due to vandalism. There had been some nice benches, but they were destroyed, and some other decorative features of the bridge were removed at the same time.

This is just a view of Downtown OKC from the original northern part of Scissor Tail Park. There’s actually some well-disguised clutter in there, stuff that can’t be moved or upgraded visually. Still, they did a good job of hiding that stuff. While the former majestic trees in our city were removed a couple of decades ago, the city management is trying to put some back.

Some of the clutter is hidden by massive new buildings. This one is the OKC Convention Center, just across the street from the park. I recall seeing this under construction at a couple of different stages. There’s a new hotel attached, and several that were here before. The indoor sports arena is the next block over and some other downtown revival structures farther north into Downtown. The city is investing in public sculpture and other amenities to draw the tourist traffic. Just having a real pro basketball franchise (OKC Thunder) has made a huge difference. Not all of that big money is wasted.

There’s not much accounting for taste, but this steel sculpture of a giant feather is at least amusing. A series of bond elections called MAPS included a lot of this gussy-up stuff. Of course, we can’t forget how much was spent on our bike trails that I love so much. I’ve seen the city’s so-called master plan for more bikeways as well as pedestrian friendly walkways in the works.

All of this stuff was shot with my Pixel 7 phone.