Today we intended to drive from Fort Lauderdale to Orlando. We were only expecting it to take a few hours but, as usual, we got sidetracked. We found a huge antique mall and indoor flea market at Pompano, just outside of Fort Lauderdale, and spent a number of hours browsing.
Minutes after leaving that we came across Butterfly World, a huge enclosed habitat for butterflies and birds. It may not sound exciting but it was pretty cool to walk amongst such a number and variety of butterflies. We had a lot of fun photographing them...
The best part was finally seeing what a hummingbird actually looks like. Normally we just see them fly by and the speed they flap their wings makes them almost invisible, often you just catch a shimmer in the corner of your eye and when you look, they are gone.
This one stopped to take a drink...
This bird started to take an interest in my shoes, I was just hoping he wouldn't take his interest any higher...
Because we got delayed we knew we wouldn't make it to Orlando before the gathering storm hit. We stopped at dinner time in a small town called Lake Okeechobee. It's a nice place and they were having a rodeo that night, but we were tired and decided to skip it. The storm didn't amount to much, it mainly passed us by. Some lightning but not a lot of rain.
Lake Okeechobee calls itself the Bass Fishing capital of the USA. It has a population of 50,000 but this increases to over 80,000 in fishing season. It is a huge lake and is totally surrounded by a high stop bank that has a sealed cycle track on the top. Cyclists and runners come from quite some distance to do a circuit. Quite an achievement for such a rural area.
This is one edge of the lake, right next to the town, as the storm starts to pass by. The photo probably doesn't do justice to the ominous appearance of the sky.
There were two gigantic weekend flea markets across the road from our motel. They were supposed to open at 8.00am but, this being the USA where no one likes getting up early, there were only a few stalls just starting to open and no customers at all when we cruised past at 8.30am.