Round the Lake, an Ag Tour of SoFla

Diesel in a V12 E-type... someone tried it last time we went to Indiantown...

Round the Lake :
an Ag. Tour of SoFla...
By Pascal Gademer

First let's start with a joke... Last time we drove to Indiantown, a V12 E-type owner filled his tank with diesel... the smoke signals were useful to find the Seminole Inn...

No worry here, I didn't make the same mistake !

Some of us wanted to drive our cars, and the only way you can find some open roads in south Florida is to go North West, into rural Palm Beach County and why not, around Lake Okeechobee. Of course, you can't see the lake as it's hidden behind the levys but the roads are nice considering we're in Florida and there is nothing except canals to force them to turn.

It's also an Agricultural tour in a way, as we started thru the horse farms in West Palm Beach, the sugar industry south of the lake thru Clewiston, the self proclaimed Sugar Capital, cattle ranches along the west shores and into the citrus groves and Orange Juice processing plants along the Beeline Highway... We only missed the produce farms further west...

Peter Hansen was the event coordinator for the day and he did a grea job puting the route together... nobody got lost. Some 10 cars gathered off 441 and Okeechobee road and we soon got on our way, westbound. The drive was about 140 miles, in perfect sunny weather and went smoothly. No problems with any of the cars, another proof that well maintainted Jaguar are reliable... Among the cars in our group, we had a good mix of moderns and classics, with two E-types and the always impressive Mark IX of Rick and Diane Hartwell; seeing the classic saloon moving along briskly and keeping up with traffic is always fun ! Modern cars were well represented including a nice XK8 convertible driven by Edward and Cirella, Edward was SFJC President in the mid eighties... welcome back !

After a brief stop, for gas and to help those whose personal range is shorter than their cars... we got to Indiantown and parked the cars across the Seminole Inn. The Seminole Inn is a favorite Sunday Brunch destination, our club usually go there once a year; they offer a great Brunch buffet in the wonderful setting of the old fashioned Inn.

During the lunch some of us decided to head to West Palm Beach to view the proposed location for our 2002 concours, right on the Intracoastal, and we shot a few preview pictures of the cars on the grass...

Participants:

Chris and Patsy Canning, 2002 X-Type Sport
Peter and Irene Hansen, 1974 E-Type OTS
Pascal Gademer, 1972 E-Type FHC
Diane and Rick Hartwell, 1959 Mark IX
Edward and Jenny Cirella, 1997 XK8 Convertible
Hillary and Richard Irving, some Japanese thing...
Peter Giacobbi, some SUV thing ...
Bill Smail, 1992 XJ6
Brad and Sharon Cline, riding in Chris' X-type...

Picture Gallery
see notes below

- To view all 39 pictures in the gallery, use the Next Previous First and Last links, descriptions when available will appear under the picture. Once you've clicked on Next for the first time, you can just press Enter to activate that link again. The drop down box allows you to jump to a specific section.
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Note to Netscape users : Netscape doesn't seem to handle image manipulations in Javascript as well as Internet Explorer. Netscape 4.x limitations :
- the button used to change the size of the picture doesn't work
- vertical pictures appear distorded
- the formatting of the descriptions under the pictures doesn't blend as well...
These problems appear to be solved in Netscape 6.x .