Living Our Dream

South Central Florida Part II: Lake Okechobee

Ortona South campground was so nice and peaceful we were reluctant to leave, but we did want to check out Lake Okeechobee while we were in the area, so we drove about 20 miles east to Clewiston, FL.

On our way out of the campground, we pulled over (as we frequently do) to drop off our trash at the dumpster. A little raccoon was just climbing out of the dumpster as Paul got out of the car. Paul and the raccoon watched each other for a while, then the raccoon climbed down from the fence and trotted off into the bushes. Whatever the raccoon got, it must have been good. He couldn't stop licking his chops.  Paul opened the lid very carefully every time he went to the dumpster after that.

Clewiston is known as "America's Sweetest Town" because it is the home of the U. S. Sugar Corp., which is the largest producer of sugarcane in the United States. Approximately 400,000 acres in the area around Lake Okeechobee are devoted to sugarcane, and we saw many fields of sugarcane like the one shown below.

Sugarcane is a member of the grass family and it does well in the warm temperatures in South Florida and in the organically-rich soils around Lake Okeechobee. Sugarcane is propagated from sprouts that come from cuttings taken from the stalks of mother plants. After a field is harvested, the stubble is allowed to regrow to produce a new crop. Sugarcane is harvested about once a year for three or four years before the field has to be replanted.

Last year when we visited South Florida, we learned Lake Okeechobee is the origin of the Everglades. The Everglades is not a stagnant swamp, but is a sheet of slow-moving water that flows from the lake to the Gulf of Mexico. Click here to read about last year's visit to the Everglades.

In the 1800s, the Everglades were considered to be a worthless swamp, and there were plans to drain it. By the early 1900s, drainage canals had converted large areas of the Everglades to farmland. The building of railroads by Henry Flagler and others made South Florida attractive to new residents and tourists, and new towns sprang up.

Development has disrupted much of the water flow from Lake Okeechobee and has put major pressure on the ecology of South Florida. About 50% of the original area of the Everglades is gone. Fertilizer runoff reduces water quality, and non-native, invasive plants and animals pose further threats. There are ongoing programs in South Florida to restore parts of the Everglades, including regions around Lake Okeechobee.

With an area of about 730 square miles, Lake Okeechobee is the second largest freshwater lake wholly contained within the United States. Lake Michigan is the largest. Although large, the Lake Okeechobee is very shallow. The depth varies from year to year and from season to season, but the average depth is only about 9 feet.

The western and southern sides of the lake are very shallow and grassy - more like wetlands than a lake - much like the Everglades. The shallow waters attract many wading birds like the snowy egret in the next photo.

The photo below shows the grassy shallows at the southwest corner of Lake Okeechobee near Clewiston. Notice the air boat at the dock. Air boats are used to navigate the shallow waters.

The grassy shallows were so wide we couldn't even see the main body of the lake, nor could we see it from any one of the several other locations we tried. We learned the main body of water is best seen from the eastern side, but we decided it was too late in the day to travel that far. Maybe we'll find a campground where we can stay and explore the eastern side of the lake some other time.

There is a 20-foot high dike around the Lake Okeechobee. The existing dike was built after a 1928 hurricane caused a breech in the previous dike killing hundreds of people. The Lake Okeechobee Scenic Trail runs along the top of the dike around the 110-mile perimeter of the lake. The trail is used for hiking and biking.

 

Fill material for the dike was dug from adjacent areas forming a rim canal that runs almost all the way around Lake Okeechobee. You can see the canal running along the inside of the dike in the two photos above as well as in the foreground of the photo below. In some areas (especially at the northern and eastern sides of the lake), the canal runs along the outside of the dike. Propeller-driven boats can navigate the canals along the dike, and they can follow channels out into the lake itself. Lake Okeechobee is known for bountiful fishing, especially bass, and is the home of numerous sport fishing tournaments. The people in the boat in the photo below are trying their luck in the perimeter canal.

We were disappointed we didn't get to see the main body of water at Lake Okeechobee, but the dike, canals, and grassy shallows were interesting in their own right.

We really liked relaxing at Ortona South COE campground. It was fun watching boats going through the lock, and the campground was peaceful and quiet. We have another place to add to our "must return to" list. For now, however, it was time to move on. We'll have more info about where we ended up in our next post.

South Central Florida Part I: Ortona Lock

We originally planned to meander down through Florida and head for the Keys again this year after leaving Myrtle Beach. We had reservations at Curry Hammock State Park near Marathon Key for four days over the weekend before Thanksgiving, but we got a call about 5 or 6 weeks ago saying they had decided to completely close down Curry Hammock State Park for about a week to replace a bridge to the campground. Unfortunately, that shutdown overlapped two of the four days we had reserved. We had a choice of keeping the two remaining days or cancelling completely at no charge. We didn't think it was worthwhile to drive all the way to the Keys for just two nights (it would have been over 350 miles one way from New Smyrna Beach), so we decided to cancel. We briefly considered staying at a private campground, but the private campgrounds in the Keys charge $70 to $100+ a night so we quickly ruled that out.

To fill the hole in our travel plans, Margery found a reservation opening at Ortona South Corps of Engineers campground near Lake Okeechobee. Since we have never been to the south-central part of Florida, and since the campground got good reviews on rvparkreviews.com, we reserved for five nights.

Ortona South has 51 sites with electric (30/50-amp) and water only. The roads and pads are paved, the patios are gravel, and the sites are widely spaced with attractive landscaping of palm trees, small live oak trees, ornamental grasses, and shrubs between the sites. The photo below shows our site at Ortona South.

And the next photo shows more of the loop where our site was located.

 

Ortona South is located near the town of Labelle, FL, at the Ortona Lock on the Caloosahatchee River. The river is connected to Lake Okeechobee by a canal to the east, and it runs to the Gulf of Mexico at Ft. Meyers, FL, to the west. Ortona Lock is one of several locks that are required because Lake Okeechobee is 15 to 20 feet above sea level.

The campground is very quiet. There are no trains, no interstate, and it is over a mile from State Route 80 that passes by the entrance road. There weren't that many boats, and the boats must slow to produce no wake in the vicinity of the lock, so there wasn't any noise from the river either. Ahhh, there are few places any more where you can find complete quiet! We were in heaven.

The photo below shows the dam at Ortona. The lock is on the other side of the bank to the left, and you can walk across the dam to watch boats go through.

The next photo is a view from the dam. The pilings in the background line the entrance to the lock. Several anhingas were sitting on the ropes that held the warning buoys upstream of the dam.

 

The plants at the sides of the waterway in the photo above are water hyacinths. The plant gets its name from its hyacinth-like blooms.

While the plants are beautiful with their lavender blooms and shiny leaves, the water hyacinth is a non-native, invasive species. The plants are killed by cold weather and are not a problem in the north. In fact, water hyacinths were an attractive addition to the water gardens we had at our stick houses back in Pittsburgh over the years. Unfortunately, water hyacinth is probably one of the worst water plants in tropical climates because there is no cold weather to kill it off, and a colony can double in size in as little as two weeks. Water hyacinth propagates by sending off runners that form new, daughter plants. The plants float on the surface of the water, and the daughter plants can break off and float away to start new colonies. The plants can also reproduce by seeds.

Water hyacinths are native to South America and were introduced into Florida in the 1880s. Water hyacinths form dense mats that hinder boat traffic, slow water flow, reduce the oxygen content of the water, and shade the water to reduce native plant and fish populations. Millions of dollars a year are spent to control this invasive plant.

When we got to the lock, we happened to hit a time when there were several batches of boats going through each way. Unlike most other locks we have seen that pump water in and out of the lock chamber, this one was a little smaller and they just cracked the upstream gate open and let the natural flow of the water fill the lock chamber.

When the water in the lock reached the upstream level, the gate was opened and boats entered. The change in level is about 6 1/2 feet.

 

On the day we went over to the lock to watch the boats, one of the upstream gates was not working. Most of the boats going through were pleasure boats and didn't have a problem - except the catamaran in the next photo. They had to check and double check the width before they allowed him to attempt to enter. As you can see, there was only about a foot or so on each side, but the captain was able to guide the boat through without touching either side.

The crews held lines along the walls of the lock while the upstream gate was closed and the downstream gates were cracked to allow water to drain out of the lock. When the water was at the downstream level, the gates were opened fully, and the boats exited the lock.

 

While we were at Orona South, we needed to restock some groceries, so one day we drove to the Walmart in Lehigh Acres about half an hour to the west. By the time we were done with our errands we were hungry. We remembered passing an interesting-looking barbecue joint in Labelle, FL, with a lot of cars in the parking lot (always a good sign) so we stopped on our way back to the motor home for a late lunch. The photo below shows Skeet and Sara's Log cabin Bar B Q.

Even though it was past lunchtime, there were still a lot of vehicles in the parking lot. Not only that, a good many of the vehicles were pickup trucks, so another good sign. We were greeted by sweet-smelling barbecue smoke as soon as we got out of the car.

 

We both ordered pulled pork barbecue platters which were served with a choice of fries, baked potato or sweet potato. The platters also included slaw and a piece of Texas toast. Because they were in the middle of a shift change in the kitchen, our food took longer than usual, so they gave us each a complimentary cup of turkey noodle soup while we were waiting. Paul isn't usually a fan of turkey noodle soup, but this was delish! It was thick with lots of turkey and lots of flavor.

When our lunches finally arrived, it was worth the wait. The barbecue was smoky and moist and served without sauce. There were containers of sweet or vinegar-based sauce on the table so you could add as much or as little sauce as you want. We both liked the sweet sauce.

After lunch, we headed back to the campground. We still have more exploring to do, so look for our next post.

New Smyrna Beach, FL

Wow! We really dodged a bullet with the remnants of Hurricane Ida. The storm slowed over northern Florida for a while and sent us plenty of rain in Myrtle Beach on Wednesday. Then the low pressure area from the storm apparently drifted back out to sea, regained some strength, and slid up the coast as a "nor'easter." Myrtle Beach missed the worst of the weather, and so did we as we traveled south on Thursday through a little mist and drizzle accompanied by some occasional wind gusts. However, as we watched the morning weather reports on Friday, the storm apparently hit the North Carolina and Virginia coasts pretty hard with strong tidal surges, rain, and 50+ mile an hour winds. Delaware, New Jersey, New York, and New England were bracing for the storm to hit on the weekend.

While what used to be Hurricane Ida was heading north, we were driving south. We had about a 5-hour drive made 10 miles longer by inadvertently entering the wrong exit number in Gracie, our GPS. However, rather than backtracking, we found Inland Harbor RV Park at our new exit in Darien, GA, to be a very adequate substitution. Inland Harbor has paved roads and pads, grass between the sites, and almost all the sites are pull-throughs. Some of the pull-throughs are a little short, but they gave us an extra long one so we wouldn't have to unhook the toad.

Inland Harbor has full hookups with 50-amp electric available available for an extra charge of $3 a night. Since the weather was cool, we told them we only needed 30-amp, so they didn't charge us the additional amount even though the extra-long site they gave us had a 50-amp plug on the pedestal. The campground also has free cable TV and Wi-Fi. Inland Harbor is only a stone's throw from busy I-95, so there is a good bit of traffic noise, but it's still a good place for a one or two-night stopover. The photo below shows our site at Inland Harbor RV Park.

The next photo shows another view of the campground.

The Darien area, we found out from fellow travelers, is an interesting historical old town famous for Scottish Highlanders, great shrimp restaurants, and BJ's Steak and Seafood that's supposed to have a fabulous Sunday buffet. Darien is also on the way to Jekyll Island which we've never visited, so all told it rates being put on our 'need-to-return list.'

We were happy to awake to bright sunshine on Friday morning. From Georgia, we had only about a three-hour drive to New Smyrna Beach, FL, where we stayed at New Smyrna Beach RV Park. We stayed there about the same time last year when we visited Florida's Space Coast. Click the highlighted links to read about our 2008 visit to Florida's Space Coast that includes Kennedy Space Center, More Kennedy Space Center, and The Coast itself.

New Smyrna Beach RV has full hookups including Wi-Fi. The roads are a mixture of sand and gravel, and the sites are mostly grass. The site width is decent for a private campground, and it is fairly quiet with only a few, very distant trains. The first of the two photos below shows our site at New Smyrna Beach RV Park, and the second is a view down the row where our site was located.

 

 

Unlike last year, we didn't have a lot of sightseeing planned. So when Margery picked up a flier in the campground office saying that the La Mesa RV Center located about half an hour away in Orange City was having an open house on the weekend with free lunch, we decided to drive over. La Mesa sells Tiffin motor homes, and we seldom pass up an opportunity to look at Tiffins, especially if it's coupled with free food. Besides, New Smyrna Beach only has a regular Walmart, and we needed some groceries, so we planned to stop at the Super Walmart near Orange City on our way home.

We arrived  about 10:30 AM. La Mesa RV wasn't very crowded yet, so we had the motor homes pretty much to ourselves. In the next photo, Margery is checking out the large, residential refrigerator in a Phaeton.

After looking around a while, we stopped in the office for a nice lunch of pork barbecue and baked beans, then we made our Walmart stop on the way back to New Smyrna Beach.

Last year, not only did we stop at Kennedy Space Center, but our visit also happened to coincide with a space shuttle launch. It was a night launch, and we watched it from the campground. This year, our visit again happened to coincide with another shuttle launch. Since this year's launch was scheduled for mid-afternoon, we decided to go down to the beach to watch.

The beach at New Smyrna Beach is a lot like the beach at Daytona, which is only about 12 miles to the north - it is wide and flat, it is hard-packed, and you can drive on it. The next photo shows us driving along New Smyrna Beach.

As you can see, it wasn't very crowded on a Monday afternoon. After driving along the beach for a while, we parked, got out our chairs and our afternoon snack, and waited for the launch. No, Margery doesn't have a new hairstyle. It was just windy.

As we approached launch time, more cars and people began to appear on the beach. Right on time at 2:28, an orange glow appeared to the south, and the space shuttle Atlantis rose in an arc over the ocean.

We watched until the solid-fuel booster rockets ran out of fuel and dropped off. After that, the main engine took over. Although the smoke and bright flame from the solid-fuel rockets were easily visible, the main engine runs on liquid hydrogen and oxygen; and we couldn't see it anymore because of the bright sun.

As we finished up our snack, Paul accidentally dropped a cracker on the sand. He picked it up and tossed it to a lone gull that was standing on the beach about 20 or 30 feet away. Soon, we were completely surrounded by hungry gulls looking for a handout.

We tossed a few crumbs from the bottom of the cracker box into the air, and a couple of the gulls just soared downwind of us right in front of our faces waiting for more. Notice the lingering smoke trail from the shuttle in the upper left.

When we ran out of crackers, we headed back to the motor home. From New Smyrna Beach, we continued on our way south. Stay tuned for our next post.

More Myrtle Beach 2009

We spent 11 days in Myrtle Beach this year. Our stay is always limited because we wait to arrive until winter rates to kick in on November 1, and they have a rally at Ocean Lakes around the second full weekend in November every year. We think it's a free (or at least heavily discounted) weekend for anyone who has bought an RV from the dealership owned by Ocean Lakes. The campground sets aside large blocks of sites (especially the sites along the ocean), so it's hard to get reservations near the ocean for that weekend unless you purchased your RV from Ocean Lakes. It's just as well because it's usually starting to cool off, and it's time for us to be heading south anyway.

We had good weather most of the time we were in Myrtle Beach. It was cool and cloudy the first full day we were there, but it cleared out; and we had bright sun and temperatures in the upper 60s and lower 70s most of time we were there. We didn't do any sightseeing; but we shared dinners with our friends, Barbara and Dick, and we went out to dinner one night to Outback Steakhouse to celebrate Dick's birthday. We rode our bikes around Ocean Lakes and looked at the beach houses on the property. We hung out around the motor home and relaxed, watched the NASCAR race on Sunday and watched the Steelers beat Denver on Monday Night Football.

We also spent some time on the beach. While sitting on the beach, Paul sometimes reads; and he sometimes likes to watch any passing boats and the gulls and sandpipers. The gull in the next photo seemed to be strutting along the beach.

 

Paul, who is usually an early riser, likes to watch the sunrise over the water at Myrtle Beach. Most days he just watches from the window of the motor home while working on the computer and sipping coffee, but he tries to get out onto the beach at least once to watch the sunrise in person.

 

 

Sunset at the beach is pretty, too. Even though the sun is behind you, it makes the sky over the ocean glow purple, pink, and orange. The next photo is looking northeast up the beach toward downtown Myrtle Beach.

 

Sunrise and sunset are also good times to watch the shore birds heading out from or back to their roosts. The brown pelican in the photo below is heading home for the night.

As we said, the weather was gorgeous for most of our stay. Although the number of hurricanes drops drastically after the middle of October and hurricane season is officially over on November 1, we watched the weather reports as they tracked a rare November hurricane (Hurricane Ida) as it crossed the Gulf of Mexico. Fortunately, it was downgraded to a tropical storm by the time it came ashore early Tuesday morning south of Summerdale, AL, where we had been staying a few weeks ago. We got an email from the new friends we met at Rainbow Plantation, and they said it was a little windy and they got a lot of rain, but there was no major damage.

Fortunately for us, Ida was quickly downgraded further from a tropical storm to a tropical depression because the outlying bands of rain were headed toward Myrtle Beach well before the center of the storm came ashore. Unfortunately for us, the storm slowed down, sat over the Florida Panhandle, combined with a few other fronts and weather systems, and pumped moisture from the Gulf of Mexico northward for a couple of days. We watched the clouds increase on Monday. It rained off and on Tuesday, and our friends, Barbara and Dick headed for home a day early hoping to be ahead of the heaviest rain. We stayed put. Later on in the day, the winds picked up a bit, the skies got dark, and the surf became a little more angry-looking.

Then on Wednesday morning the skies opened up. The wind got a little stronger, and it poured for a couple of hours. Paul took the photo below of our site from across the road during a brief halt in the rain. The low spot in the road had collected about 8 or 10 inches of water.

Contrast the next photo of the ocean looking northward toward downtown Myrtle Beach with the one above taken at sunset several days prior. There was a lot of debris and there were many broken seashells on the beach.

We tried to extend our stay by a day to give the rain more time to clear, but our site and most of the ones around us were booked because of the rally we mentioned earlier. Since we would have had to move way to the back of the campground anyway, we decided to take our chances with the weather and head south as we originally planned. Check back for our next post and we'll let you know where we landed.

Myrtle Beach 2009

By the time we left the Mobile area, the weather had cooled off and warmed back up again two or three times. We visited Bellingrath Gardens over in Mobile last spring (click HERE and HERE to read out two posts about Bellingrath Gardens from 2008), and we wanted to see the gardens again in the fall. However, the warming of the weather toward the end of our stay when we planned to go to Bellingrath brought with it clouds and a chance of rain every day, so we decided to save a fall visit for another time.

It was about 700 miles from where we were staying in Summerdale to our next destination in Myrtle Beach, so we decided to break the trip down to three days of driving. After about a four-hour drive, we stayed the first night at Leisure Time Campground near Auburn, AL. The roads at Leisure Time were paved, and pads were a combination of gravel and dirt. They had full hookups with 30/50-amp electric and cable with a limited number of channels. The photo below shows our site at Leisure Time Campground.

 

The campground is built on a hillside, so some of the sites aren't real level. The hillside overlooks a municipal park with four ball fields, and there were several games going on in the evening when we were there. Fortunately, the the games weren't noisy, and the lights were out and everyone was gone before 10:00 PM. However, we could hear the traffic noise from the nearby interstate all night.

After another four-hour drive, we stopped for the second night at Flynn's Inn Camping Village. Flynn's is an older campground that is located a little south of Augusta, GA on U. S. Highway 25. Highway 25 is four lanes, and it's a busy road. Our site was only a couple hundred feet from the road, and there is no barrier of any kind - no shrubs, no fence, and no buildings - to block the traffic noise. Flynn's has full hookups, and a few sites have 50-amp electric. The main road is paved, but it is very rough and uneven. The sites are mostly grass. The next photo shows our site at Flynn's Inn Camping Village.

 

We usually don't like to drive three days in a row, so we scheduled two nights at Flynn's. While in the Augusta area, we checked out a Corps of Engineers campground north of the city. It was a nice campground; but as we suspected, it turned out there were way too many trees for good satellite reception.

We also stopped to visit one of Margery's former coworkers from back in Pittsburgh. It was great catching up with Andy and Liz Reid along with their children (l-r) Helen, Noah, Sam. This very talented family has an author, composer, and sports fanatic among their children.

The next morning, we had another drive of a little over four hours to Myrtle Beach. We discovered Ocean Lakes Campground in Myrtle Beach our first year of full-timing, and we have returned every fall since. Ocean Lakes is a large campground with hundreds of sites and beach houses. In the summer, there are activities (especially for kids and teens) and special events like concerts, a golf cart parade, and a craft fair. The campground is so big, it's almost like a small city. We hear things can be a little zooey in summer; but by fall, things quiet down quite a bit and the lower winter rates kick in November 1.

Ocean Lakes has paved roads and full hookups including 30/50-amp electric and cable. Wi-Fi is available at extra cost. Many of the sites are paved, and they continue to pave even more every year during the off-season. The paved sites cost $5 more a night, so we always chose an unpaved site in the past. Early this year, we got a letter stating the site we had reserved had been paved and the price would be going up. We had the option of calling the reservation desk if we wanted to change to a lower cost, unpaved site, but we decided to keep the paved site. The pavement is really nice to keep the sand out of the rig in spite of the higher cost, and we didn't want to give up our site which is just two back from the beach. The photo below shows our site at Ocean Lakes.

Our friends from North Carolina, Barbara and Dick, were going to be returning home from Jekyll Island about the time we were planning to be in Myrtle Beach, so they made reservations for a site near us at Ocean Lakes for a few days. We originally met Barbara and Dick last year in Davenport, IA, and we look forward to when our paths cross. The last time we saw them was last winter when they visited us at Blueberry Hill RV Resort in Bushnell, FL.

Our first full day in Myrtle Beach was cool and cloudy which precluded riding bikes or sitting on the beach to chat, so we all piled in their car and drove over to a shopping area called Broadway at the Beach. Broadway at the Beach is a collection of about 40 or 50 shops, a couple dozen restaurants and snack shops, and a number of entertainment venues. The shops are laid out around a lagoon and there are sections that have different themes such as Caribbean, New England, and Charleston. The whole thing has a little of the flavor of Disney's Epcot.

It was a cool, dreary weekday so it wasn't very crowded as you can see from the next photo.

We strolled around a while checking out some of the shops. Barbara bought some gifts for her grandkids, and Paul was attracted to a shop selling saltwater taffy. We are still watching our carbs, but we couldn't resist buying a few pieces of taffy. Yum!

 

And, of course, we couldn't pass up the opportunity for a tourist photo.

 

So far, we're just having a good time hanging out, sharing dinners, and visiting with Barbara and Dick. You never know what else will turn up, so stay tuned.