As they exited the burnt wasteland, they were only minutes from Lake O’s north shore.

At its northernmost tip, they detoured up onto the US Army Corps of Engineers built earthen rim, also known as the Herbert Hoover Dike. They were relieved to see that Lake O’s water level had returned to normal since its indiscriminate 2006 emptying had placed south Floridians on permanent water restrictions.

Lake Okeechobee, the liquid heart of South Florida, is 730 square miles and has an average depth of 2.7 meters (9 feet). It is the second-largest freshwater lake wholly within the continental United States, second only to Lake Michigan. This three way shot shows the lake from right to left: June 2000, January 2003, and June 2007. Its shrinkage is particularly evident on its west and southeast sides. Images courtesy of NASA/METI/AIST/Japan Space Systems, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team

They then rode through a place that time forgot. Somehow left helplessly frozen in the mid 1950’s, the town of Pahokee contains two of Marlow’s favorite things to show new visitors: a long, Royal Palm tree lined lane along the lakeshore and the weirdest idea in cross marketing seen to date.

They stopped for the night on the southern shore of Lake O in Clewiston, putting down US 27 to a motel trimmed in purple paint and neon, run by native-dressed Pakistanis and garishly lit at night like a fluorescently cheesy Las Vegas strip club.

Augustus described the room’s interior décor as 1950’s bordello with its over-painted, textured velour wallpaper. The sign out front said these were NEW CLEAN ROOMS. The motel’s operators confirmed upon check-in that they had recently painted everything.

They celebrated the trip’s coming end the next day by supping on local fried chicken and guzzling the remaining Blue Sapphire gin.

Strange technicolor dreams resulted from this admixture of British spirits and Cajun spiced cooking. This excursion into a Zydeco shadow land was suffused with French Canadian accented songs intermixed with images of a Creole-speaking Strother Martin from the movie Cool Hand Luke.

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