Photography: North Hills Again

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I just wanted to see those stone banks again, and that meant a long ride up to Memorial Road and Hiwasee, out north of Jones. I tried to vary the normal route some. There are a few things I couldn’t shoot simply because the summer roadside foliage includes massive quantities of sandburs (Cenchrus spinifex; locals inaccurately call them “goatheads”). They aren’t always easy to see in the mixture of grasses, but that will change in a week or two. Some are starting to ripen into purple, but many just fall off and turn pale beige, hiding nicely in the sandy dirt. I note in passing that we haven’t had any frost, just a scattered few nights in the mid-40°F range (7 C), but it’s cool enough that native grasses are going into hibernation.

So here we start with just a few shots from the westward run on Memorial Road starting around Post Road and turning south at Hiwasee Road. Memorial is just over the watershed into Deep Fork drainage, so it’s very hilly. That was a great workout.

The temperatures were cool and the wind was out of the north most of the time. We had a cold front roll in yesterday. It’s funny how the same air temperature (50°F — 10 C) feels colder when the wind blows from the north. The skies were overcast, which meant that there was no bad angle. It also meant the pictures turned out a little dark, but I managed to get most of what I wanted.

This was the panorama I made from three successive images. I’ve noted in the past that where the North Canadian River crosses Hiwasee Road is the northernmost wander of the river course in Oklahoma County, and it cuts up against a low sandstone bluff. It’s a fishing and swimming hole in warmer weather, but I am always intrigued by the purple layer exposed in the face of the bluff. I rode down to the sandy beach on the south bank to get this panorama, plus the long telephoto I posted first up at the top.

From there I did some more zigzagging on the back roads until I caught the long angled Spencer-Jones Road. If I remember correctly, this fragmentary brick wall is what’s left of a brick building that was still standing not so long ago. A lot can happen when you are laid up for six months without riding. But at last I’m back out and able to handle those longer rides; today was somewhere north of 30 miles.