January 12, 2014
Day 8: Florida City to the edge of the Everglades on Hwy 41: Running like a dog to the Everglades
We showed up early at Walmart In Florida City, ready to put our money down on some heavy local cooking gear.All they had was a double heavy double burner, so we gave up at least for now and maybe forever, and slunk out of town towards the north. Our way took us through Homestead, which like Key Largo had a special cachet from a mention in a movie, this time, the Orchid Thief (ok, so that's the book and the very loose movie adaptation is called Adaptation).
At first Homestead looked very plain, but when we broke into the country, heading north parallel to hwy 997 in order to join with 41, the Tamiami Trail, everything changed. Now we had agricultural lands mainly devoted to nursery growing.There were neatly planted rows, lush tropical landscaping, and best of all, orchid growers.
It's too long since I read the book/saw the movie to remember any specific grower names, but it was fun to think that one of these might be one of those. When the back roads we were following became just too broken up, we hopped directly onto 997. Here we found something even more fascinating (to Grampies), that is, fruit stands. A local fruit stand gives a chance to see fruits that have not been doctored up for you by Safeway, or presented way unripe so that they look good but will taste like nothing.
The stand had all that, but also fruits that we had never heard of, much less tasted. Asking dumb questions about these brought us to the attention of Jesus, behind the counter. Naturally, our goofy bikes - or around here, any bikes, were the subject of lots of explanations by us. Jesus had a bit of a personal interest as well, since he had bought a bike at Christmas but was yet to really use it. It is the dangerous roads between his house and work that are holding him back. Florida still has a lot of work to do in this area.
In response to our own many questions, Jesus cracked open a fruit called a Maney. It is soft inside and tastes much like a cooked sweet potato. Next up was a Sapodilla. No way to describe that one.
We visited for quite a long time, feeling glad to get insight into the life of a local person and to learn about some local fruits.
Jesus now warned us that we were heading into some very dangerous traffic should we continue on 997. He shifted us two miles east (off route) to a safer northbound road. This new route opened up some dramatic vistas of a different kind. Huge tracts of what we assume had been Everglades were newly settled with suburban construction and box stores. Just stating it baldly like that belies the scale. Here, Home Depot, for example, had taken a bare perhaps 10 acre site and popped down one of their standard giant things. Now multiply that by Walgreens, Publix, CVS, and dozens upon dozens of other famous names, all brand new faux Roman (or something) architecture in some cases, or their standard designs in other cases. Each piece looks like it was plunked on the Go board or like some sort of chess piece. This includes the huge parks and schools. The high school, looked like it just fell off a drawing board and on the way called out "Supersize Me".All this infrastructure was joined by boulevards of three lanes each way, and supported km after km of single family suburban developments. All had impressive landscaping and some surrounded artificial lakes.Yikes, when America looks poor, it looks really poor. But then suddenly it turns around a lays billions of dollars onto a flat landscape and creates - something?
We made our way through this "wonder"land and up to the Tamiami Trail. This is the road that cuts through the Everglades and heads for the West coast. We stopped at a Shell/Pilot station that was having an impromptu rotating party, as dozens of motorbikers gathered at its picnic tables. In the lot, a tropical smoothie stand was serving up ten varieties of real juices, and a churro stand was doing good business too. The language here is Spanish, and only by dusting off what I remember was I able to buy two smoothies.
From here we phoned the Gator Park to make sure they would have a tent spot for us. No way. Reading between the lines, it is too dangerous to put up a tent in the Everglades. This was reinforced by some of the biker friends we instantly made.They say especially now, with the waters relatively cold, the gators will be up on shore.
We decided to head off 10 km to have a look at the gator park, and then return to the edge of the Glades to find a wild camp.300m out from the Shell, Dodie spotted our first gator. It was lots bigger than I expected. We scratched that spot off our wild camp list!
As we cycled, Dodie mused about why they could not build a fence to fence us in at night and allow a tent to go down. After all, they do this with bears in Banff Park. As we approached the gator park, we could see that the staff residences were fenced. So yeah. Dodie also spotted two gators up against those fences. Yikes.
The gator park itself was the ultimate in hokey. Not only had they every manner of cheap gator oriented trinkets, but the lowest of the low - faux Indian stuff, like bows and arrows for the kids. In fact this area does have a proud Indian tradition of the Seminoles and the Miccosukee, and one of the few good items at the Gator Park gift shop was a book about them.
The airboat rides that are at the core of the Gator Park experience featured huge boats with V-8 engines and twin propellers. Large crowds were boarding them, and it all seemed to turn us off. We had already experienced a long trip through the Okeefenokee Swamp in Georgia a couple of years ago, and decided this would have to do. However, we will be passing the Miccosukee tourist Indian village tomorrow, and we will see what they are up to.
We pedalled back 10 km and spent the evening partying with our biker friends - the Miami T Rebels. Soon we will go to a wild camp we have scoped out. Walking behind it while it was still light, it seemed pretty dry. Hopefully the gators will stay in the swamp until we go looking for them again tomorrow.
Today's ride: 70 km (43 miles)
Total: 304 km (189 miles)
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