My wife Nita travels with me. The purpose of this blog is to keep a record of our travels in our motorhome, add pictures we think are interesting, and allow our family and friends that may be interested to follow us on our adventures.
Nita got to see her favorite baseball team today as the Minnesota Twins hosted the Baltimore Orioles at their winter training camp in Fort Myers. The Birds played most of their second string players to let them get some experience. It was a beautiful day and we enjoyed the outing but we lost 7-1.
The Minnesota Twins winter training camp, Hammond Stadium, Fort Myers
The opening pitch
Get your ducks, or birds in a row, in this case Cormarants, there a is a Cormarants awaiting a vacancy so he can hop up. Notice how nicely they decorate their balls. This row of buoys keep boats from getting to near to the hazardous turbulent water exiting from the damn.
The fishing pier at the Corps campground. This fisherman is throwing a casting net, it takes a lot of practice to make good casts.
Nice cast, net just hitting the water, it sinks and traps the fish under the net.
The Cabbage Palm is the Florida state tree, it has a variety of names, one is called Swamp Cabbage. The old time Floridians who lived in the outbacks were called Crackers, they used the heart of the swamp cabbage as a vegetable. Unlike the hearts of palm that are canned and come from South America, the Cabbage palm has a large core that is edible. At the festival they were served as fritters, in soup, French fried and probably more. We tried the fritters and they were very good.
All kinds of food was available, including alligator. This is a big event for LaBelle, folks from miles around attend, it starts with a big parade, rodeos, music, cloggers, etc. We stayed for several hours, finished it off with a big ice cream cone.
Nita with a cup of swamp cabbage fritters
I like this sign, and they don't lie, they state that they have sold under one million plates of alligator.
No Florida festival is complete without an armadillo race, yes you could place bets, a race every 15 minutes. Kids raise the starting gate, the kid on the right didn't get his side up for a good start.
Number 6 was in the lead until some bettor threw in some food crumbs and distracted him. There should have been an official protest but alas, none. Number 2 won and 6 had to be carried back to the barn.
U S Sugar Corporation in the Cleweston area produces about 10% of the USA sugar consumption. We toured some of the cane fields, mill and refinery. The corporation is one of the largest in the US and owns 187 thousand acres in this area, the mill here can process 45,000 tons of sugarcane per day. Typically the cane contains 13% sucrose, some molases, 11% fiber and 73% water. The fiber residue, called Bagasse, is the fuel that powers the factory.
Mighty sweet. This field will soon be harvested, note all the dry foliage around the canes. The fields are laid out in 40 acre squares. First the fields are set on fire to reduce all the plant but the cane. The burn is fast and a few hours later they are in the field harvesting the cane.
Burning the cane field.
A tractor pulling two carts paces the harvester, each cart holds 6 tons of cane. The harvester chops the cane up into one foot lengths, the black hood on top blows out any unwanted leaves and trash, the heavy cane drops in the cart. Notice how the burn has removed all the dry foliage and left just the cane.
US Sugar Corp cane processing and refinery.
Raw sugar being dumped into truck to be taken to huge storage sheds. Raw sugar is about 97% pure but needs to be refined for consumption. The refining is also performed here. It is finally shipped in the smallest 2 pound bags all the way up to a rail car load for commercial bakeries and candy makers like Hersey. How sweet it is!
South Bay is on the southern tip of Lake Okeechobee. There is a 100 mile levee around the lake and bike paths on most of it. The levee was fund by president Hoover to tame the flooding. The area surrounding the lake here is rich farm land producing sugar, beans etc. The calm wind mornings bring out the crop dusters and we are entertained by their aerobatics, if you lived here full time it might become a pain.
I took this photo of the South Bay campground from atop the levee, our vehicle is the on to the right of the pole, there is a lake behind us, each evening as we sat in our chairs by the lake we had an alligator visitor, he would just swim up to the shoreline and watch us. I'm sure he meant no harm, expect he was spoiled by some folks feeding him and he was looking for a hand out.
Chevy on the levee or bike on the levee. The lake is on the left and sugar cane on the right. Nice riding, just returned from 2 miles behind the bike where you have to detour around a golf course, further ahead toured a fish camp and another rv park on an island in the lake. The smoke to the right/ background is from a cane burn. There are many rv parks to choose from in this area.
Caught this crop duster flying over us, looks like a near collision but as I snapped the photo a bird flew in the view.
The park is one of Florida's largest and most diverse natural areas. It is located about 20 miles east of Sarasota. The river flows through 58 square miles of wetlands, prairies, hammocks, 2 lakes and pinelands. There is a 7 mile scenic drive and 39 miles of hiking trails and many dirt roads that provide access to the remote interior. Our ability to hike into remote areas is not what it used to be but there was much to see on short hikes off the 7 mile drive. The last time we were here we saw a bunch of wild boars, didn't spot them this time.
The park offers a guide tour of the lake in this propeller driven air boat
The river is full of fish, this guy just caught this tilapia, said the day before he caught 25 and this is a small one, great eating. The tilapia is an invasive species and has really multiplied. The alligators get fat from eating them along with birds and as the signs warn, small dogs.
We saw several flock of wild turkeys, this Tom looking after his hens. There is a second Tom behind the one in front. Click on the pictures to enlarge.
A turkey hen that I got close to.
Was walking around the lake shoreline and was very close to him before I saw him half hidden in the grass. Would have probably spit me out if he had taken a bite.
Fort De Soto is an island in the Gulf, reached by bridges from the southern tip of St Petersburg. We have a nice spot on the beach with lots of visiting birds or from their perspective lots of visiting people. Most didn't pay any attention to us and some almost seemed to pose for the camera.
Nita reading and enjoying view
Yellow Crowned Night-Heron doing some fishing
Little Blue Heron
I was about 8 feet away from this beautiful, posing Great Egret
This flock of White Ibis is about 10 feet from where Nita and I are sitting, they just kept walking as they gathered something out of the grass, would guess insects or worms.
The subtropical Florida starts approximately on a line across from Tampa to Melbourne. We are spending most of our time about 100 miles south of the line. It's considerably warmer down here than the northern half of the state, most days it gets into the 80's. After a month here we have adapted to a leisurely pace. We are in the middle of an agricultural area that grows sugar cane and citrus fruits. The town Clewston to the east of us calls itself the sweetest town in Florida due to the sugar cane. To the west is LaBelle, mostly citrus there. It seems the majority of people are Hispanic who work the farms and factories. We leave our spot on the river about every 3 days or so to shop and have lunch in either town, fun to people watch and shop the isles of Hispanic food items, our friend Martha picked up some guava paste that she slices to put on crackers for snacks, quite good.
Anyway, some of the things we do besides read, bicycle, soak up the nice weather and have an evening snack with friends are:
Frisbee, a challenge making this video, camera in left hand and throwing frisbee with right
Nita with laundry bag heading into laundry and library. The campers leave the books they have read here and pick up ones others have left, nice deal.
Some of our neighbors have strange pets, cats, dogs, birds and this couple from NC a lion and cub. Nita is unafraid of feeding the big cat, how about the nice touch of the leashes and water bowl for them.
Watching the boats coming thru the lock
Jack and Martha at sunset after a evening snack with us. Tomorrow we take off for several days on the gulf beach at Fort Desoto just south of St Petersburg. We will miss Jack and Martha as they are departing tomorrow for Alabama, will catch up with them next winter. - Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Well, maybe not quite that exciting. Actually it's been a lazy day, temperature around 80 and sunny. Nita was sitting out in the sun reading then came in and took a nap. I've been tooling around on the bike looking for some of the wild life mentioned above,no luck, just cows.
There is a mile and a half ride through a cow pasture from the main road to the campground. The line of trees in the background and rv's are along the river.
Here's the all you can eat beef place, the guests act like buzzards and are not too friendly.
We have been traveling in our motorhome for 5 years. The first year we met Roxann and Mike Ringer (from Michigan) in Maine and Jack and Martha Bently ( from NC) in the Allegheny National Forest in NW Pennsylvania. Just about every year we cross paths as we all wander around the country and particularly as we concentrate in Florida every winter. We stay in email contact and generally know the others travel plans. Jack and Martha are here at Ortona the same we are and Roxann and Mike are not far away. We had a picnic lunch here Friday with the whole bunch, had some good food, laughs and tall tales. Will see them again in June when we attend a rally in Ashville, NC.
We met and enjoyed the company of Charlie and Carolyn Leahy last week, they travel in a View like ours, hope to run across them again next year in our Florida travels.
This is SB day, super bowl, and we are anxiously awaiting to see our Ravens play and hopefully win. Nita a bigger fan than I, she likes to see #52 do his opening dance. Martha has a big motorhome and says she is going to lay in her big queen bed and watch on her big tv, Martha's big interest is not the game or the players but the commercials, enjoy Martha.
Mike and Roxann on left, Martha and Jack on right
We enjoy the Saturday Hispanic market in LaBelle. Here's Martha and Nita sampling some real tacos, we moved on and tried some tamales, sugar cane, boiled peanuts, lunch on the move.
The birds are Cattle Egrets, in this case it's a Lama, they stand by to eat worms and insects as the animals disturb the soil.
