Monday, April 02, 2007

Ortona Locks on the Caloosahatchee

Sunday Morning .... and Big Al's 92nd Birthday---Happy Birthday!!!....we departed our beloved Keys to start north. Me pulling the new boat behind the motorhome and Marge following in the pickup. It's sort of a pain but we did not want to store the boat in the Keys with the threat of Hurricane season coming. We had decided on leaving it inland somewhere near Lake Okeechobee away from storms and at a substantially reduced insurance rate because of location. We had made reservations at a Corps of Engineers Park on the Caloosahatchee River called the Ortona South Campground at the Ortona Locks that had looked kind of neat and boy is it! Absolutely beautiful campground right on the river with water and electric...no sewer, but there is dump a station. I posted a couple of pictures taken from our site.

This is our site which is typical of all 51 sites on the River..... although some tables were set up to share with an adjacent site, which is perfect when traveling with others.

We had lots of boats go by during the day from large paddlewheeler excursion boats to some really unique other boats that I haven't seen before.
The view from our site West that gives you a pretty good idea of the area
And of course the locks themselves.


This was the sunset this evening it was pretty as you can see it certainly compares with those at Key West
We have stored the boat so we will be on the road home tomorrow morning.