Tuesday:

GEOGRAPHY LESSON/ Central Florida:

The terrain is basically flat and scrubby and not particulary attractive.  No Ocean or Gulf views, but lakes are everywhere!  Cattle ranches (not farms) span the landscape.  Florida calls it's cattlemen Crackers (not cowboys) because of the sound of the whips used in times past. 


Orange and grapefruit orchards are constantly in view.  They are easily accessible to the public, so the fines for taking fruit from them is very steep.  Trucks hauling the citrus harvests are continually on the move all winter and you can gather spilled fruit all along the turning points of the back roads and highways.  Strangely, the grocers sell imported Navel oranges from California because Florida growns juice oranges.  The trees are mutated to bloom while still bearing fruit to speed up the production.  (See photo below)   If you've been to Florida in February, you probably can remember that intoxicating orange blossom fragrance that permeates the air.


Then there are the huge phospate mines.  In the photo below, our Jeep is near the machinery, so you can appreaciate the scale.  The digging produces mountains of sand that you can see from some distance.  Sometimes as Stan and I would drive home from day trips to the coast, late at night through the mining areas,  we wouldn't see a car or signs of civilization for long periods of time...nothing but us and God's creatures, great and small.