Monday morning we got up pretty early since we had a long drive ahead of us. According to google maps it was about 315 miles but that was with about 150 miles on a state highway. The truck GPS had other ideas and routed us on more interstate highways so we stayed on I-75 through Fort Myers passing within about a half mile of our next stop at Seminole Campground but we couldn’t see it for the trees. That’s good news and bad news I guess; bad that we have no preview but good that it apparently won’t have a beautiful view of the freeway. We were then on 2 lane FL-80 for 33 miles until we got here to Ortona South. This is a beautiful COE (Corps of Engineers) campground located at the Ortona South lock which provides a way for boats to get from the Gulf of Mexico to Lake Okeechobee via the Caloosahatchee River section of the Okeechobee Waterway. Anyway; we’re parked here in site 29 which is a water/electric site 50 amp (no sewer) which means we have to walk over to the bath house to have a shower. Luckily the bath houses are cleaned by contract from Goodwill and they are pretty spotlessly clean which makes Connie very, very, very happy. We got here after our 357 mile day and got parked and set up in site 29 by about 1715. Neil went on a bike ride, came home in the dark, and then they had some leftover chili-mac for dinner along with a salad and a frozen roll from the freezer. They tried to watch some TV (no trees here so it’s really great for satellite visibility) but by about 2130 they were done, stick a fork in them so Neil dragged them off to bed.

This morning we got up and had breakfast and caught up a bit on internet stuff…we have great connectivity on our cellular data connection since we can see the cell tower from our campsite. After that Neil got a nice shot of our campsite.

and went on a longer bike ride while Connie cleaned the rig. After lunch she did some work and he got a couple of shots of the really great views our of our windows; we have seen kingfishers, anhinga, and a Great blue Heron already. The waterway in the pictures below is maybe 30 feet from the back of our trailer; the first shot is looking to the left towards the lock and the second looking to the right towards Lake Okeechobee.

As you can see; the views are great as is the campground itself. Connie is really impressed with her picking this one; beautiful, easy to get into and out of, friendly staff and visitors and most of all great weather. We are running our A/C because the no-see-ums (itty bitty gnats) come right through the screens on the windows if you don’t. Otherwise we would have them open and be getting the breezes. Supposedly they only are out at night so we may try again tomorrow opening the windows during the day and see how that goes.

Tonight we’re off to Clewiston for dinner and a run by the Walmart for supplies and then tomorrow we’ll probably do something fun.

Cyas.