On Hwy 70 heading south west we drove past a lot of orange orchards and met many trucks 'bulk' loaded with oranges, obviously going to a factory to be processed as they were empty going the other way.
From Okeechobee we drove down the west side of the lake through miles of sugar cane fields. The country side is extremely flat and only about 20 feet above sea level, in fact the whole of Florida is flat with the highest point in Walton County at 345 feet, near the Alabama border. Bill reckons that some of the highest points are the bridges spanning the Intracoastal waterway. We could not see Lake Okeechobee as the dikes were blocking the view.
Clewiston, population about 6,500 is known as the sweetest town in the USA, as it has 3 sugar mills in the area. Lake Okeechobee is very shallow and has a dredged channel across it, forming a branch of the Intracoastal Waterway, from the East coast to the West coast of Florida.
A dike completely surrounds Lake Okeechobee and you can see here at Clewiston how the 'runabouts' pass through the lock into the channel then into the lake. The lake was covered with weed and grass for as far as we could see.
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