Well today's plan was to circle Lake Okeechobee because it was there and because it was huge. Did you know that it is the second largest fresh water lake in the United States second only to Lake Michigan. The reason you can't see this lake from the rode only 100 or 200 yards away is the 20 foot wall of dirt the Army Corp of Engineers built around the entire lake. Why would they do that? Well after 2 hurricanes in 2 years killed close to 3000 people because of storm surge in 1926 and 1928, the President wanted something changed and this is what they did. I just can't image how long it took to do this because the lake covers 720 square miles.
Ok, we didn't see much of Lake Okeechobee but we got a couple of pictures when crossing a bridge. The lake looks like a ocean from the angle we saw. The other thing we saw lot's of today was Orange trees and cattle. Acres and acres of trees and some of these cattle farms were gigantic. If it weren't for the orange trees, I might have mistaking this place for Texas. Sometimes you could lookout to almost a horizon distance away before you could see a tree on these cattle farms.
Straight and flat, so much so that we ran one section of road that was 61 miles long and I can't recall leaning the bike in a turn. That is an entire hour without leaning left or right. Once again by the end of this 270 mile ride, Lori and I were smoked once again because of the heat. In some places the heat index reached 104 with a temperature of 95. We had plently of water with us and about every 15 to 30 minutes I was passing the bottle back to Lori to make sure we were both ok.
Last thing to mention about todays ride was bugs!! I mean lots of bugs. My poor motorcycle ate so many bugs that I could barely see through my windshield by the time we stopped for lunch. I took a few pictures just so you could get the idea. Make sure you checkout the headlight shot.
Tomorrow, for our last full day in Fort Myers, we will roll though Cypress Swamp and also roll up the Western Gulf coastline. I expect that we will see a lot of nice homes tomorrow on the coast.
Today’s mileage = 270
Total for the trip = 2859
Day 13 at EveryTrail
Map created by EveryTrail:GPS Geotagging
You got a good "taste" of the love bugs. Twice a year they have their fun in FLA annd this time of the year is one of them. If you travel at night, they're not bad. And they're generally not near the beaches either.
ReplyDeleteEnjoying the reports here!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lovebug
ReplyDeleteSt. Armand Circle and Lido Beach are great stops near Sarasota.
May 16th, I will be covering all three of the locations you mentioned. Might not be stopping, but I will be cruising through. So if you read Day 15, you will see the Map for the next day ride, which will be 16. Thanks for all the info.
ReplyDelete