{"id":3232,"date":"2016-02-05T18:46:46","date_gmt":"2016-02-05T18:46:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.towingsilver.com\/?p=3232"},"modified":"2016-01-07T18:50:38","modified_gmt":"2016-01-07T18:50:38","slug":"one-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.towingsilver.com\/?p=3232","title":{"rendered":"One Down…"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"COE<\/a><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Ortona South Campground was next to a lock on the\u00a0Caloosahatchee River portion of the Okeechobee Waterway.<\/p>\n

\"Gate<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Looking<\/a>
Looking up river<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"The<\/a>
The lock for the boats to go through is on the right bank of the river<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The campsites were lovely. Water and electricity at each site and tables with shelters over them.<\/p>\n

\"Campsite<\/a><\/p>\n

And the sites were level! How wonderful not to have to jockey around to keep things on an even keel.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The view out my door<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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?)<\/p>\n

\"Flo<\/a>
Flo decked out for Christmas<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Some of the campers were really into the seasonal decorations.<\/p>\n

\"Over<\/a>
Over the top<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

These guys really got into it! And, you should have seen it with the lights on.<\/p>\n

\"Fellow<\/a>
Fellow Michiganders<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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…<\/p>\n

The mailing address for this campground is Moore Haven, Florida, but I never saw that town. The closest town that I saw was Clewiston. \u00a0Driving 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.<\/p>\n

\"Sugar<\/a><\/p>\n

And where you have sugar cane, you have factories that process it into sugar.<\/p>\n

\"Sugar<\/a>
Sugar cane growing in front of the factory<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"Cattle\"<\/a>
Cattle<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"Wading<\/a>
Wading birds<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I enjoyed watching the birds looking for their dinners in the controlled creek just outside the campground fence from my site.<\/p>\n

\"butterfly\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I even managed to take a photo of a butterfly. The better shot should have been one of me chasing it around.<\/p>\n

Next stop, Lake Manatee State Park.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u00a0Caloosahatchee River portion of the Okeechobee Waterway. The campsites were lovely. Water and … Continue reading One Down…<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[339,340,341,342],"class_list":["post-3232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-army-corps-of-engineers","tag-caloosahatchee-river","tag-rv-christmas-decorations","tag-sugar-cane"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.towingsilver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.towingsilver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.towingsilver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.towingsilver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.towingsilver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3232"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.towingsilver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3251,"href":"https:\/\/www.towingsilver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3232\/revisions\/3251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.towingsilver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.towingsilver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.towingsilver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}