I thought this was a great sign! And, I hope to see more of the Corps of Engineers campgrounds. They are always so well designed, built and maintained. They are engineers, after all.
Ortona South Campground was next to a lock on the Caloosahatchee River portion of the Okeechobee Waterway.
The campsites were lovely. Water and electricity at each site and tables with shelters over them.
And the sites were level! How wonderful not to have to jockey around to keep things on an even keel.
The camp hosts took the initiative to organize a hot dog roast/pot luck dinner for Christmas eve. (Yeah, these posts are landing out-of-sync with the calendar, but it is hard to keep up. Besides, would you want to read a daily posting of my doings?)
Some of the campers were really into the seasonal decorations.
These guys really got into it! And, you should have seen it with the lights on.
These folks decorated in an understated, yet elegant manner. I had my orange fiberglass shovel in the back of the truck. Maybe I should have gotten it out and wrapped lights around it…
The mailing address for this campground is Moore Haven, Florida, but I never saw that town. The closest town that I saw was Clewiston. Driving back and forth to pick up groceries and such, I passed miles of what look like the invasive Elephant Grass you see all over up north. I finally figured out that what I was looking at was sugar cane.
And where you have sugar cane, you have factories that process it into sugar.
In addition to sugar, they also grew other crops in the area. One I could identify was cabbage. There were other sorts of things growing, but they were in early stages of growth and I couldn’t tell what they were. I wish farmers would label things for us city slickers.
I had no trouble identifying the cattle ranches, though. This one was right outside the campground. If I turned a bit to the left, I could watch birds.
I enjoyed watching the birds looking for their dinners in the controlled creek just outside the campground fence from my site.
I even managed to take a photo of a butterfly. The better shot should have been one of me chasing it around.
Next stop, Lake Manatee State Park.