480. Poteau, LeFlore County (OK74)

All right, I like this courthouse. I know it’s not extraordinary, but not every courthouse has to be. It’s a little grander than I would have expected for the town, but then again the town may be a little bigger than I thought it would be.

While I am loathe to include drug references because I don’t know who might be reading this, dispensaries seem to be quite legal in Oklahoma, so when I saw this across the street from the courthouse, well, that joke just writes itself.

I also noticed the cornerstone here (which isn’t a literal cornerstone, but whatever). A buddy of mine is a high mucky-muck Master Mason once told me that while keystone layings used to be quite common in the past, they have become less so over the years because Masonry is considered less important to the community and something and what not and governments and blah blah blah. This means when there is a cornerstone laying, Masons tend to come from all over the state or region because they happen so rarely these days. And this one was laid in 2008? I’m impressed. This definitely has a far older look to it. Whatever tradition they were trying to emulate, they did it well. I’ve seen a lot of courthouses at this point and it definitely fooled me for a bit. I definitely thought it was another wonder of the WPA.

I originally went for the closest cache, but I noped out the second I saw what it looked like. I don’t mean to tell anybody their business, but I don’t think that a rock hidden in a field of rocks qualifies as a D1.5. The second one I went for? The GZ was really close to where some guy parked his truck, so he asked me if I needed anything… I convinced him that I was inspecting the retaining wall behind the truck. The third time, was the proverbial charm. A jar under a lamp skirt at a former Wally World. Simple and to the point, though, who ever heard of a former Wally World? The very concept of one closing down boggles the mind! And while I was at it, I shot up the road to pick up a challenge! I’m quite sure I have 50 souvenirs…

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With this, all I have left of Oklahoma is the three counties of the Panhandle. You would think I would have been more elated, but I’ve been feeling a little off this trip. I’ve had a couple of weeks to thing about it and I think I’ve figured out what that was. Since this was kind of a spur of the moment thing, I didn’t do my regular planning and preparation. I haven’t spent days or weeks of anticipation of this, preparing myself for that. I never really thought about how much that affected what I was doing until now. I’m not exactly doing this completely by the seat of my pants. I’ve done a bit of planning for this in the past in a general sense, and I really only spent an hour parsing this all out before I got on the road. All that said, it’s just not the same. But I had a ton of daylight and at least 24 hours to work with. Since I was out here and done with this part of Oklahoma, it was time to slip a little more easterly and spend a little time visiting…