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Friday, January 10, 2014

Home on the Florida Range

If you think Florida is a land of golf clubs and glitzy gated communities.... well you'd be right. But the interior, in the south at least, is something different. Cattle ranches abound - the bovines, here, tiny dots in the distance, each with an accompanying white bird, the cattle egret, which snacks on the flies to mutual benefit.


 Wide, flat plains criss-crossed by canals from what used to be a giant swamp, the roadside barrier makes alligator-spotting a challenge.


The ranches, with their big arch gateways, just like the Wild West,  alternate with orange groves and even the occasional surprising small hill. (Atop one was a resort called "Alpine Village")


Driving behind an orange lorry.


We passed a giant orange processing plant and the sweet scent stayed in our nostrils for miles. I expect if you live near it you get sick of it pretty quickly. Though as a Pennsylvania local once said about the smelly paper mill town, Johnsonburg, "It smells a lot like bread and butter to us!"

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