Two Lane Florida Adventure to Okeechobee - Day Five, the Trip Home

It is so very interesting how you can travel on the same road and see different things each time! Such is the case today as we head home. On 441 N, we found Arnold's Wildlife Rehabilitation Center. It is a non-profit educational-based wildlife care facility.  They are dedicated to bringing people and wildlife together to develop a community awareness of the value of our Florida wildlife.  Their goal is to rescue, rehabilitate, and return recovered animals to their natural habitat. Unfortunately, some have sustained injuries that limit their return to the wild. Arnold's also has a free roaming 1/2 acre butterfly garden. Next we passed by a huge dairy farm, McArthur Dairy. It was started in 1929, with just 20 tan Jersey cows and the help of two friends who were willing to work for food and lodging. Over the years McArthur's perseverance, steadfast integrity and dedication to the highest standards of quality won him the loyalty of families from Vero Beach to the Florida Keys. More than 70 years after its founding, they still produce the finest quality milk products, including Mayfield ice cream. Then we saw Russakis Ranch. It is a family own and operated ranch. Russakis has been in the cattle business since 1993 and purchased this ranch in 2003. The ranch covers part of two counties St. Lucie and Okeechobee. You see a name and recognize it, but you aren't sure why ....  A-1 Florida Sod Farm did that to me. It cultivates and harvests its own sod on FL 60 in Osceola County. It not until we got close to Dean Still Road, did it make sense. Their other sod farm is on Dean Still Road in Hillsborough County. We pass it every time we take the "shortcut" to Kissimmee. If you look on a map, you don't see much on FL 60 between 441 and 98, but you would be wrong! Today we saw two large farms. Mack Farms in Lake Wales was the biggest. Arnold Mack started growing his own watermelons in 1967, after serving in the military. Since then Mack Farms has increased their crops and grows new crop red, white and yellow flesh potatoes, and fingerling potatoes. They also grow seedless watermelons, and sweet onions. The farm is approximately 1800 acres of their own and they lease additional land for proper crop rotation. Along FL 60 is SUMICA. Why the name in capital letters? It stands for Societe Universelle Mining Industrie, Commerce et Agriculture, a French society that had timber rights to the land. The town of SUMICA, established in 1917, thrived on lumbering and turpentine. There was a sawmill, 50 or so houses, a commissary, church, school, and a railroad depot. The town even had it's own currency for the company store. Apparently when the pine forest was gone the commerce was gone and so was SUMICA. The town and all it's inhabitants vanished in 1927, with remnants forming a ghost town today. The SUMICA tract was purchased by Polk County and the South Florida Water Management District (SWFMD) in 1997 as a 4,000 acre wildlife management habitat. There is a two mile trail and three and a half mile looped hiking trail following the old railroad bed raised above the surrounding wet prairies, scrubs and the oak hammock where much of SUMICA was. You can see remnants of the town in concrete piers, old rail bed, bricks, clay floors and shallow wells. You'll also see wildlife, flocks of wild turkeys,sandhill cranes, and that unusual looking falcon, the caracara. We made it back to Zephyrhills safely. There is always more to see and share, but this is it ... Until our next two lane adventure.