Back from another short vacation

We got back home yesterday from a short vacation. I took a lot of pictures and will post some later.

We left on Wednesday morning and drove to Sallisaw. It rained on us most of the way there. As usual, we did some geocaching. The first cache we found was in Akins, OK. It was a virtual cache, meaning there is nothing physical you have to do. Instead of signing a log sheet, as is the usual practice, you observe the scene and then e-mail the cache owner the answers to some questions found on the cache site.

The GPS took us to the grave of Charley Arthur Floyd, better known as Pretty Boy Floyd. Floyd was a notorious outlaw who met his demise at the age of 30. There are plenty of other Floyds buried in this cemetery. I'm guessing he came from a large family. I am wanting to know more about him now that I have seen his grave.

We ate dinner that evening at Shad's Catfish Restaurant south of Sallisaw. The menu is on the wall, literally. The food was pretty good. I had the all-you-can-eat catfish. We spent the night in a motel in Roland, not far from Ft. Smith, AR.

By the next morning the rain had stopped and we went looking for caches as we headed for Spiro. Spiro was the location of the Caddo Indians who formed a government about a thousand years ago. They built mounds of dirt in the area known as the Spiro Mounds. We watched a short film and then took a self-guided tour around the mounds.

From Spiro we went south through Poteau and on to Heavener. We checked into our motel and had dinner at the Southern Belle, a railroad coach converted to a diner. The next morning we visited the Heavener Runestone, a short distance away as the crow flies, but there is a railroad year between the runestone and our motel. We had to drive around the rail yard.

The runestone is fairly large -- something like 14 feet high and 12 feet wide. It is encased in glass now, but in years past it was exposed to the elements.

After seeing the runestone, we drove over to the Talimena Drive and viewed the fall foliage. We drove west toward Talihina and found one cache along the way. We stopped for dinner at Pete's Place in Krebs. Their specialty is Italian food. I had the shrimp alfredo. The unique thing about this restaurant is that each table is in a separate room with a door to a hall. This restaurant is famous for Choc Beer. We left, driving through McAlester over to the Indian Nations Turnpike. We drove north and got home before it got dark.