Taking The Road Home from the Talimena National Scenic Byway

The weather wasn’t the best for taking photos. It was cold, cloudy and a little chilly but it didn’t stop us from enjoying the beautiful fall colors. We were afraid that we had missed all the colors but there was still some left. I told David if the sun had been out the colors would have just popped. There are many vistas that you can pull into and get out to take photos. I made David stop at every one of them so I could at least get one photo. We both HIGHLY recommend that you take the drive. The first or second weekend in November is said to be the best time.

We arrived in Mena late afternoon. We were told to look for an old Studebaker Dealership that had been restored. We found it and like kids staring into a toy store we pasted our faces to the big glass windows. We were lucky enough to find the owner there and he invited us inside to take a look. To see the photographs CLICK HERE!

After visiting the restored dealership we decided we better look for a hotel. Thank goodness for GPS and Google. We found a very quaint little mountain resort called “Mena Mountain Resort”. It was nested back in the woods and had two really cute ponds in front. It looked like a large mountain lodge but was very friendly and homey. The owner was enthusiastic to see us and was more than happy to show us around. The rooms surrounded a beautiful salt water pool but we told him we probably wouldn’t be using it. He showed us to our room and had us fill out a menu for our breakfast in the morning. The room was a nice size with a large king bed, table, sofa and chairs. You could probably spend an entire week here and not feel like you were living inside a motel or hotel room. It was very nice and we will most definitely be back.

We headed out the next morning after eating a well prepared hot breakfast. The morning was cold and drizzly but that didn’t stop us from continuing on our road trip. We decided to take a different route back that took us south of the byway and took us around Sardis Lake in Pushmataha County. We followed the lake around and headed towards Coalgate to visit friends (and of course look at a piece of farm equipment David was thinking of buying). We had lunch in Pauls’ Valley and headed back on 19 to try and beat the snow. That didn’t quite work out as we had planned. It was coming down pretty hard by the time we got home Sunday afternoon.

Rowdy met us running down the drive and was very excited to see us. Rather than go into the house and relax we thought it might be better to just get all the animals fed before we relaxed. It was a good thing because once I sat down on the couch with a glass of wine I was done for the night.

It was a fun road trip and I highly recommend it to anyone that loves the fall colors.