Ortona South C.O.E., Moore Haven, Florida
Blaine’s suddenly become allergic to something here. I’ve never heard him sneeze so much. I blame his sister. She asked if we had allergies. I said “No.”
The next morning . . . . . Sister’s are like that. Or so I’ve been told.
We went out early, walking down to look for the otters again. No otters, but there was a large flock of white birds! They were flying in tandem and reminded me of the ones we saw out over the Gulf in Destin.
We also walked over to watch the lock.
US flag and the Army COE flag
There’s a boat wanting passage, so they opened the gate and let them in
The boat comes in and anchors itself to the side
This shows the water level when a boat enters from the Gulf of Mexico side of the river.
They open the gate on the Atlantic side just a bit to let the water in
Until the water in the lock equals the water on the Atlantic side
The gates open and she’s on her way towards Lake Okeechobee and the Atlantic Ocean
And they close the gate again.
Unless there’s a boat on this side waiting to come in. If so, they repeat the process – but in reverse.
Trust me, we’re as tired of looking at otters and the lock as you are. Time to get outta town!
Blaine took us about 30 minutes away to the Oklahoma Coochee Coochee Forest to do some hiking. Alright, it’s actually the Okaloacoochee Slough State Forest. He couldn’t find much information, so we’re flying by the seat of our pants here. Even more so, since we don’t have much gas to do all this exploring we’re expecting to do. He’s usually good at keeping our tanks full. I don’t know what happened. We’ll blame it on the plugged head. Thanks, Sis!
First up though, was the Spirit of the Wild – a wildlife management area. Sounds great!
Um. Not so great.
This board is all about the Florida Panther and how to act if you see one.
No chance of that with us! : )
Anywho, we paid our day-use fee and drove down the road looking for a trail of some kind. All we found was a roadblock.
Take a look at the GPS map.
At least we know what direction we’re headed in. : )
Road block.
We turned around and headed to the Forest and the Twin Mills Trail. Sounds promising!
Here’s where we had to park.
As soon as we exited the Jeep, we decided we needed to rethink our attire. Off went the sneakers and ball caps, on went the boots and safari hats. Hopefully, there’s no snakes in the grass . . .
Who names these trails anyway? There was no evidence of any mills on the entire 2.5 mile loop. Plus, I had told Blaine, “It’d be nice to see something other than vultures and gators.”
I say this is a panther print.
Blaine says dog.
What say you?
If you’re having trouble seeing it, I circled the prints in the next picture.
Please forgive the crooked lines, I did it while the coach was moving. : )
They’ve let things go a bit around here.
Stop for what exactly?
I had to know who this was. Here’s what I found:
Alico is a Florida-based agribusiness and land management company built for today’s world.
Part of their business conglomeration is Alico Citrus.
Alico Citrus, the largest citrus producer in the United States, produced 7.6 million boxes in 2017.
So, we’re walking up the road which happens to be part of the trail and up ahead we see an alligator walking across the road!
Too far for a picture, but here’s the evidence!
That’s where he went. Crossed right under that barbed wire fence to the other ‘forbidden’ side!
No wonder he was in such a hurry to get back. He got caught being bad!
There he is. He’s a bigun!
Guess what? You got it! Vultures and Gators. All told, we must have seen a couple dozen of the first and 50-60 of the second. We watched a TV show that said there could be as many as 5 million in the State of Florida. Makes our 50-60 seem paltry doesn’t it?
The way this Forest is set up, there’s a main highway, and every so often, there’s a sign for a trail. So we’re back on the road, looking for somewhere else to walk when suddenly, “Did you see that??!?” “Yeah!” “I think that was a Caracara bird!” “I think so!” So around goes Jeep and we look for the fence post where we saw it. Not there. Bummer! It was sitting there looking straight at us too! So here’s a picture off the internet instead. Looks just like what we saw – including the post!
Southern Crested Caracara
We spent the next hour or so, driving up and down the Forest lanes.
We’d never seen a sign like that before. : )
The end of the road
These were growing all over the ground where one of the roads dead-ended.
Kinda like wild violets.
Someone’s been having fun down here – – shooting skeet from the looks of the evidence.
Too bad they couldn’t be bothered to clean up after themselves.
This is a really big snail shell – a little smaller than a golf ball!
Nothing much to see here.
Not even wading birds
Down another road
Any place we stopped with hopes of hiking was grown over. We had no interest in walking in that.
Time to eat! But definitely gas first! Then we stopped at Micky-D’s for $1 drinks and Little Ceasar’s for pizza and wings. Once we had our dinner gathered up, Blaine drove over to a park in the town of LaBelle. Very nice little place to eat!
Our picnic area was on the other side of this drawbridge.
When we were finished, we collected our stuff, turned toward the Jeep and trash can and there in the tree right beside us was a flock of ibis! They must have been there the entire time! We’re so unobservant sometimes – especially when eating is on the agenda. 😊
We strolled up and down Main Street before heading back home. Actually, Blaine was on the hunt for ice cream. He didn’t find any. He was sad. Until he found some Reese’s Eggs.
Here’s some other things we ran across:
Said engine
Like the bottom sign?
The street was lined with live oaks.
This was incredible!
This ‘parasite tree’ has completely engulfed a palm tree, except for the top!
It looked like something out of a horror movie!
If you look close, you can just make out the palm fronds at the top.
And now for our final adventure of the day.
Driving home, Blaine suddenly flings his arm and emits a quiet yell. “What?” “A frog was on my hand!” “What?!?” I didn’t see it for a minute and then, yep. There it was. Hopping up onto the gear shift console. Itty bitty thing. But still. What is it with frogs and our vehicles? I tossed it out the window when we stopped for a red light. It should be fine. There was a storm drain . . .
TOTAL HIKING MILES: 3.5
Year To Date: 174
Daily Average: 2.71 (day 64)