Meeting Up With Friends In Florida

Florida’s Natural Visitor Center is in Lake Wales, Florida. The building is built to look like a “cracker” house. We walked in and everything is nice and clean and orderly. The lady at the counter offered a sample of 4 kinds of orange juice and varieties in the foundation. She said there is a video and yes, it is captioned, she said, before we could ask. She saw Kevin interpreting to me. Yeah! This place gets a B (some of the videos outside the theater weren’t captioned). She said it used to not be captioned but a few years ago they redid the video and then had it captioned. Good! She said they know a lot of people are hard of hearing and even she has the captions on on her TV at home. Yep. 

Here are some things we remember that we learned: *Florida’s Natural is a co-op of farmers. They own the land, trees, and company. *1,000 individual farmers owns 50,000 acres. *It can take up to a year for an orange to grow. *The tree can have buds and fruit at the same time. *Oranges don’t continue to ripen after picked. *Farmers graft a tree into a tree. This makes the new tree produce sooner. *Florida’s Natural uses the entire fruit – even the rind for oil & cattle feed.*All fruit is picked by hand. *Water is sprayed at the base of the tree to help prevent freezing; they don’t use smudge pots anymore.

Florida’s Natural Growers, One Of Their Many Plants, Lake Wales, FL 01/24

This was a small visitor center but we felt we learned a lot. Wish we could tour the plant across the road! In the store Kevin got orange popcorn – delicious and sweet, and I got key lime tea cookies…made in California. LOL

So Small, We Drove Right Past It, Wingate Creek State Park, Myakka City, FL 01/24

When we get to a new area, I write on little note papers things to do around there. I get recommendations from friends, fellow travelers, and sources online. Then when we have time to go out exploring, we can pick from a variety of things to see and do. One day Kevin picked from my little-card pile a state park. It is called Wingate Creek State Park. The info said it was the dwelling place of people 1000 years ago. We were following Garmin and as we got close I looked over to the left and saw a tiny grass parking space and a wooden sign but there wasn’t a brown state sign along the road pointing to it. We turned around and went back. The state board sign didn’t give any info about the place except to watch out for skunks. The map shows a long trail and a sign in/out sheet was covered in plastic. We decided we didn’t want to walk the trail. We had our handy dandy Florida state park pass all ready and not a soul there to see it! HA 

We decided to go on to Myakka River State Park. The drive was the same scenery we had seen all around this state. I told Kevin I was surprised we had read in St Augustine about how big the cattle business is in Florida because we have seen very few cattle. Just a few minutes after that conversation, literally, and the land opened up and there were farms of cattle everywhere. Oh, so pretty! Big shelters and grass everywhere for them. I enjoyed this road very much. So fun to take the “roads less traveled”, the country roads, and discover new things to see.

“…the real Florida” 🙂 Myakka River State Park, Sarasota, FL 01/24

At Myakka Creek State Park there was a long line of cars – 14 in front of us but it moved quickly through the guard shack. While in line, we saw a sign we have seen often stating “Welcome to…the Real Florida” and that makes me smile. The visitor center is small with displays mostly of animals in the area. There were several films to watch but weren’t captioned. Myakka River State Park gets an F. We did learn a few things of interest, though. We didn’t realize panther, puma, cougar, and mountain lion are names of the same animal! We had a fun discussion about that and Kevin said something like, “Well, ya can’t have ‘mountain lion’ in these here flatlands!” HAHAHA

Myakka Fine Sand, Myakka River State Park, Sarasota, FL 01/24

Also learned about all the sand around here. It goes more than 4 feet down. A sign said, “During the dust bowl days of the 1930s, saving soil was near the top of the nation’s priorities. People understood that their food supply depended on it and their economic livelihood was at stake.” Another sign states: *no other state in the United States has Myakka fine sand. *There are more acres of Myakka fine sand mapped in Florida than any other soil type. *Myakka fine sand occurs on land that naturally grows pine trees, palmetto and a large variety of grasses. *Myakka fine sand is suitable for growing crops, citrus and timber.” Fascinating! It is still hard for us to get it through our heads that things can grow in sand! 

That Guy Is Pulling Her, Great Idea! HAHA Myakka River State Park, Sarasota, FL 01/24

From there we drove the road through the park, stopping off at a bridge with a parking lot at one of the many trailheads. I grabbed my tripod and had fun taking pictures. This day was a beautiful day of sunshine and 80°s and it made the water a beautiful bright blue color. We saw people kayaking and there were several alligators in the water. A volunteer rode up to us on his tricycle and gave some information. He said alligators usually don’t stay on top of the water until the temps are 70°s and higher. What is the difference between a swamp and a marsh? I googled what the difference was, and learned, swamp has trees and marsh has grass. Learning so much today! 

Planting Rows In Myakka Fine Sand, Myakka City, FL 01/24

We went a different way home (footnote 1). Kevin asked me to get a picture of the strawberry raised rows with all the sand. It is something like black tarp over the sand and then plants are planted there.

Dear Friends, Jim And Larry, Visit HOWE! Florida SKP Resort, Wauchula, FL 01/24

We were so excited to have friends come visit us in HOWE (footnote 2). We first met Larry in 2019 at the Association of Late-Deafened Adults (ALDA) convention in Kansas. We have stayed in touch and are great friends. A new friend, Jim, we met this past November at the convention in Austin, TX. One lives north of our campground and one lives west. They came over for a visit. Oh, it was so good to see them. It was so fun to show them HOWE. Larry told us he din’t think we would ever bring HOWE to this area and see him. So glad we did!  Our visit was wonderful and we talked about so many great things – life, travel, deafness & hearing loss, experiences and more. We were so thankful for their friendship; a lovely, lovely day.

Along the road to town is a church and they have a sign out front. Up until a few days ago, the side you see heading east said, “See other side” which I thought was hilarious. And yes, on the other side was some announcement about weekly meetings. But now, they are having something big and very important…a one day revival. It is so important, the information is on both sides of the sign. Isn’t that hilarious!?! Got my funny bone to laughing hard. P.S. to this journal entry – now the sign again has important information on both sides…chili cook off coming up. 

1. “Home” is where we park it. Home is our 2022 Alliance Avenue, 36 ft, 5th wheel.

2. “HOWE” is what we named our Alliance Avenue 36-ft 5th wheel. See: Home On WhEels and we pronounce it Howie. We live and travel in it full-time around the country.