Citrus and cattle

September 13, 2016

Day 105 - Team A - 86 miles.

Today's ride took us through the heart of Florida citrus territory, which slowly gave way to cattle pastures as we went south. Lake Wales and Frostproof have big orange juice plants, but the fruit is still green and the plants are idle. Even though they grow different varieties of oranges that mature at different times of year to spread out the harvest, making frozen OJ is still a seasonal business.

Not much going on at the Lake Wales OJ plant in September.

The sign suggests a technique 13 foot trucks can use to get under the railroad bridge.

We passed grove after grove of oranges. Some appeared healthy, others had old trees that looked worn out, and others had recently been replanted with new trees. We don't know enough to tell the difference between the normal progression of citrus crops vs. trees suffering from exotic diseases.

It's normal to replace a few mature trees with new saplings.

In a couple of places the road was blocked. In one spot the road was flooded by heavy rains last night. The water was deep enough so that we couldn't pedal without submerging our feet. We managed to get the speed right so we could coast through the puddle without pedaling and without too much splashing. In another place there were some guys hanging out in the middle of the road. They refused to get out of the road as we approached, but we managed to squeeze by.

Should we look for an alternate route? Nah!

They barely moved, but we made it past them.

We saw some sunflowers, but we won't disclose the exact location in case the parakeets we met the other day are following this blog.

As the miles passed, we started to see more cattle. It's interesting that cows can ignore cars and trucks zooming by, but get excited by a tandem. Perhaps we look more like a living creature than the cars do. Sometimes they stare at us and sometimes they run - either along with us or away from us.

Cattle ignore us when they are far away.

We get their attention when they are close to the road.

When we rejoined US 98 in the tiny town of Lorida, we stopped for lunch at a cafe. It didn't look like much from the outside, but the food was delicious. After lunch we got a double weather whammy. The wind kicked up to 20 mph and switched from a cross wind to a headwind. The clouds which had been keeping the heat at bay morphed into a brief but heavy rain. We were soaked for 10 minutes, then the rain stopped. The wind persisted all the way to our destination in Okeechobee.

The Kissimmee River. They may not be visible in the picture, but it was full of gators.

That's not necessary. We're cycle tourists, we always look for birds.

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