Our one night in Oklahoma was spend in Poteau Oklahoma, some 190 miles due east of Oklahoma City. Founded in 1885, the town has a history connected to coal mining, railroad expansion and early French exploration.
For a town of less than 10,000 people, our lodging accommodations for the night were spacious and comfortable. After four days and 1,780 miles on the road, comfort was important. Just one quick observation about the Holiday Inn and Suites – complimentary breakfast is a part of your stay no matter where you are. For those of you who frequent these types of hotels, you know that a complimentary breakfast generally consists of a self-serve selection of fruits, pastries, dried cereals, coffee and either a waffle-making station or a new invention – the pancake maker. (Unless you are the first customer at the do-it-yourself pancake machine, I do not recommend it. Each time someone starts the pancake maker, it beats the preloaded pancake batter, then spits it out onto some kind of internal griddle before shooting out a pancake on what can only be described as a conveyer belt. As anyone knows – or should know – overworked batter produces anything but a light fluffy pancake.) The Hilton-Holiday Inn locations also includes some sort of egg (scrambled or as a cheese omelette), breakfast meats such as link sausage or crisp bacon and breakfast potatoes to it’s morning buffet. And in Oklahoma, you can get Biscuits and Gravy, too. Yeah, now that’s the way to start the day.
We’re going to be traveling backwards in a way today. From the hotel in Poteau we needed to work our way over to Oklahoma’s State Route 1, a scenic byway. Historically this was the route taken by settlers from Arkansas headed to what was then Indian Territory. Since we are already in Indian Territory, we’ll be making a reverse trip so to speak to the town of Mena in Arkansas, where the highway ends.
There are some beautiful vistas with spots to pull in and soak in the beauty all around you. While I had photographed nearly 150 images, I’m going to simply share some of the stops. The first such stop was the Chaha Vista Overlook.
Next up were the Dwarf White Oak, fully grown and not much more than a large shrub. These same trees grown on the valley floor below, reaching magnificent heights as an oak tree should. There are beautiful wild flowers all along the route such as the ones at Pine Mountain Vista (don’t really understand the name, since I didn’t see any pine to speak of).
Our final stop was at the Wonder House in Arkansas. The rustic stone structure was constructed in two parts connected by a breezeway. It was built in 1931 by Carlos Hill and Phil Lance, and soon afterwards sold to an Oklahoma Oil man named C. E. Foster to use as a summer house. It is just one of four houses build by Carlos Hill on the mountain, and only one of two still standing. In the 1960s Wonder House was operated as a tourist destination complete with an ample theater before being taken over by the state in 1971. The house is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
We did stop at the only Diamond Site in the continental US. However; in order to take pictures you first needed to buy a pass to get beyond the visitor’s center. On the day of our visit, it was over 100 degrees while the site itself with it’s hard-dirt surface and lack of any shade was even hotter. We hope to return once settled in Tennessee. According to the nice lady at the information desk, the best time to visit is in the fall, October or November. So it was onward for us as we headed to our next stop; the somewhat overly commercialized town of Hot Springs, Arkansas. Just a little FYI – it’s also the boyhood home of a former US President, Bill Clinton.
The road leading to the observatory tower in Hot Springs was in itself an adventure.
But one that was worth the effort. From the vista to the observation tower, you can see Arkansas spread out below you.
Making our way down from the mountain, we did spot a deer along the twisting road. You’ll need to look closely to spot her.
Can you believe all we’ve seen in just 5 days on the road? California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma and now Arkanas. Next stop, Tennessee!
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