Lake Okeechobee covers 730 square miles and is the largest freshwater lake in Florida. In fact, it is the eighth largest in the country. Ninety years ago hurricanes made direct hits on the lake, killing thousands in the flooding caused by the overflow of the lake's waters. As a result, the state and the US Corp of Engineers designed and built levees around the lake for flood control. The Lake Okeechobee Scenic Trail (the LOST) was later built atop the levees.
During the hot summer months, using the trail is a formidable undertaking. The bugs are plentiful, large, and vicious; the weeds are overgrown in unpaved sections of the trail; and the unpaved portions are often muddy. But in December, the bugs are few, the trail's pretty dry, and the weeds are under control. Of course, just to keep things interesting, the levees are currently being rebuilt and repaired, causing segments of the LOST to be inaccessible to hikers and cyclists. Meaning detours to nearby roads.
We accessed the trail from the park on the northern shore near the small city of Okeechobee. You can do a metric on paved trail heading east. We headed west. The first few miles is paved with views of the lake to your left, then you pop off the trail to cross the Kissimmee River by road, and when you pop back to the trail on the other side of the river, the trail is unpaved, somewhat rutted double track. Here you can't see the lake from the trail, just a low flood plain covered with vegetation on the left and, of course, the wide canal that surrounds the entire lake on the right. We followed the trail until we hit one of the segments under construction and were detoured down a hard packed sand street to the highway. We circled back following roads, sliding back to the trail on the east side of the Kissimmee River.
A totally satisfying ride, even if the only place for coffee was Dunkin Donuts. Not the weapons-grade caffeine we get in Miami, but it did the trick.
