Little House on the Pararie

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Little House on the Prarie



This morning was a quiet one, just got up and took my time. Enjoyed coffee and the morning show then I realized I had to leave and better get packing. Didn't have a whole lot to do but it just takes time. I took Oscar around the loop, then went about stowing everything that wasn't tied down. By the time I finished at the dump, it was 11:30 and off we were. There were 12 turns in this 2 1/2 hr trip and I wondered if we were going to make a wrong one and get hopelessly lost. But not to happen, we made it just fine.



I traveled through several different types of terrain and uses on the way, kept the drive really interesting. It started with phosphate mines, then we drove through cattle ranches making me think I was in MT or CO. The terrain was so flat it looked like big sky country. Then there was the hill country where there were several hammocks, (forests). The hamocks consist of southern oaks dripping with spanish moss, palm trees, saw tooth palmettos (low palm bushes) and assorted other shrub type bushes. And lets not forget the orange groves, lots of them.



The roads were 2 lane country roads, straight, with a speed limit of 60. In the beginning I hardly passed a car then as I got closer to Okeechobee it got busier. Then I turned off the main road and was on a very narrow 2 lane, no shoulder road with hardly a car. Then the road became dirt, or white dirt. Mostly shells and sand. There were very few trees til finally almost none and all you could see was the white road and grasses. Picture.



I checked in at the rangers station then set up camp. The campground is in a bunch of trees and most of the campers are small ones like mine. We are all close together but there is vegatation between sites so it feels comfortable. I am just across the street from the rest room and it has a washer/dryer so I can get my laundry done.



The roads here are long with no services so I knew to buy food for the week and have enough gas to get to my next campground. It is really isolated and sometimes I can find a cell signal, sometimes I can't. So don't know if I can publish this in a timly fashion.



The campers are very friendly and I think it will be a good "time out" for me. There are birder nuts here, everybody walks around with a camera, looking up. There are several birds that live here that are rare, hope to find some of them. I am going to try to take some star pictures tonight, we'll see how it goes. Supposed to get cloudy and rain tomorrow night.

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