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Area camping Tiny Lake Placid big enough to be "Watermelon Capital of the World"
By Stephen Raymon/for The Tampa Tribune
LAKE PLACID - We're now 71 miles from Okeechobee, after 504 miles of exploration.
``Florida is the watermelon capital of the world,'' said the heavyset man behind the wheel of a tractor trailer lined up ahead of several others in an open field.
The side of his truck identified it as being owned by a Memphis vegetable brokerage house; the driver was Hardy Turner.
Behind him a young man with a Marine Corps haircut hopped from a flatbed trailer from Wisconsin with temporary siding strapped down.
``Melons are scarce this year,'' said Tim Davidson of Kenosha, Wis. ``I've been coming down here for three years now and this is the only time I had to wait, except for loading time.
``Waiting now three days. They tell me I'll get loaded today.''
He peered at a front tire.
``Got my wife with me this time and this waiting can get expensive.''
We found this busy field one day while exploring from our Lake Josephine RV Resort headquarters. Later the same day we found several others where trucks were lined up and loading.
These trucks were waiting at Venus. This wide spot, about as recognizable as our town of Lecanto on a highway map, is west of U.S. Highway 27 and Palmdale.
Venus-Palmdale is the equivalent of a second stop on an frontier trail, a brilliantly red, sweet trail you'll have no difficulty following for a whole summer.
Growers from around Homestead and Naples begin shipping melons in April. By May, growers in the Palmdale, Immokalee and the Fort Myers areas are shipping. Then the trail of broken melons and loaded trucks and honey bees hunting nectar reach to Arcadia, Wildwood, Trenton, Lake City and west.
By summer's end, the long haulers will be working as far west as Texas and New Mexico.
I watched these huge freighters being loaded, sometimes with as many as 1,800 melons weighing up to 35 pounds each.
The farmer said today would finish his 140-acre field after two weeks of loading trucks.
``Any way you figure it, watermelons is big business in Florida,'' said W.W. Glenn, secretary and treasurer of the Florida Watermelon Association in Tallahassee.
Watermelons produced $62.5 million in revenue for growers from 53,000 acres planted and 45,000 acres harvested during the 1991-92 season, according to statistics compiled in Tallahassee.
The watermelon crop produces 1.3 percent of the total state income from agriculture - minuscule, but it's big business for those who gamble that the crop will not be washed out by bad weather.
The season, Glenn said, stretches from April to July.
The wonder is how the growers and vegetable brokers get together to move the crop before it rots on the vine.
Some growers market their own crops, some sell their entire crops to a broker who moves them from the field. Some depend on the same brokers to make contact from year to year and then direct truckers to them.
It gets complicated, but somehow the long- haul trucks that bring industrial goods and materials to Florida gravitate to the fields and load watermelons for the return trip.
The loading is as close to being mechanized as possible. The bottom of the tractor trailer is layered with straw and then the melons begin arriving by conveyor from the smaller trucks loaded in the fields in the same way.
It takes about an hour to load a tractor trailer.
AREA CAMPING
We have skirted the large and shallow Lake Istokpoga, a 27,000-acre fish-filled lake, for better than average camping spots and have found several.
- Oak Acres Campground is miles off U.S. 27 between Lake Placid and Clewiston near Venus. It was almost empty the day we visited, although several permanent residents were living there.
My wife, Marie, didn't get the ``nobody around for 50 miles'' feeling she had several times in Alaska in 1985 when we were the only campers in a primitive park on a stormy night when bears were prowling.
The entire campground nestles under magnificent live oaks. And for $12 a night you get solitude, hot showers, a laundry, dump station, electricity, water and, as Paul Repa told us, fish for supper from the deep-stocked pond.
- Cypress Isle RV Park and Marina is a fish camp with lush, grassy sites on the south shore of Lake Istokpoga under towering cypress. It has cottages, RV sites with full hookups and an ``old fisherman'' crossing sign.
- Palmdale Campground, on U.S. 27, south of Palmdale, until recently was Lykes Fish Eating Creek Campground. It's now leased, and the most desirable camp sites - along the creek - have been eliminated.
An aside here: Many places we stay were called ``RV resort,'' but that's about as honest a description as calling a 16-foot open skiff a yacht. For some reason, perhaps it's the water, most of yesterday's ``campgrounds'' are today's ``RV resorts.''
Some have earned the resort moniker, while others throw it over their shoulder and merrily skip along unconcerned that the word ``resort'' is not what attracts attention to their place but its setting and its cleanliness.
We had a sentimental reason for selecting Lake Josephine.It was where we stopped the first night out when we lived in the Keys, and returning to it stirred enjoyable memories.
Lake Josephine hides under live oak and pine shade and includes all the amenities. A boat dock can accommodate a couple dozen boats and those who know what they're doing have no difficulty catching a meal.
Bass and panfish and otters and alligators ``and something huge'' are in Lake Josephine, one woman angler told us.
A truly captivating setting.