5: undersea lodge, goliath grouper, route selections

March 22, 2025

Key Largo to Florida City

My first stop on the way out of town is OceanFirst. This is the company that runs the Jules Undersea Lodge. I would love to have stayed there for the night, and would have, but for two reasons. The first is that you have to scuba to your room, and I'm not a certified diver. Second, single occupancy costs $1,350.00 a night and couples are $1,687.50 (why add the fifty cents when you're charging that much?). Not a certified diver? No worries... they'll teach you. The 3-hour crash course is $250, and includes the dive gear.

The "lodge" was originally (1970s) the La Chalupa Research Laboratory, which studied the continental shelf off the coast of Puerto Rico. In the 1980s it was refurbished to become the first pressurized underwater hotel and has been operating for more than 25 years.

I copied these pictures from the internet, but didn't think they'd mind the free advertising.

Shortly after leaving OceanFirst, I passed the street sign below. I'd never heard of this kind of fish so I googled it and learned it's now called a "goliath grouper." In 2001, the American Fisheries Society changed the name after complaints that the nickname was culturally insensitive. Here in the Key Largo area, there's still an unincorporated community, a creek, and a bridge with that name.

I made a quick stop at the convenience store for a couple of protein bars and continued on. Just before leaving town, I saw this:

I'm not sure what this is... a firewatch tower?

I've been a bit concerned about this section since before I started riding. There are two ways to go from Key Largo to Florida City: Highway 1 from Key Largo and Card Sound Road from North Key Largo.

The images below are screenshots from google's Street View, which I used during my route planning.

The northern route, Card Sound Road, has less traffic, but there's absolutely no shoulder and the speed limit is 55 mph instead of 45 mph.

The southern route, Highway 1, has a good shoulder, but a lot more traffic. Plus, on the drive to Key West I noted a lot of construction.

After all of my deliberation, it ended up being a moot point: No one was traveling the northern route because of the fires, neither by car nor bike.

Highway 1 ended up being fine. The traffic came in spurts, and at times no one passed for almost a couple of minutes.

I frequently had more space than the cars.

The construction actually ended up being helpful because of the large amount of space it gave me. It's Saturday, so I didn't even have to dodge the construction workers and their heavy equipment.

My next routing question was whether I should follow RideWithGPS or just continue on Highway 1.

This is the path that RideWithGPS took me. Should I still take it? With all of the construction and the wide shoulder, the straight shot hasn't been bad at all.

I decided to follow the suggested path and promptly came to a locked gate.

I was able to squeeze around it, but shortly afterwards came to this.

A minute later, this. There wasn't enough room to slip my bike past the sides so I thought I was going to have to turn around or take all my panniers off. Then I realized I could just lean the bike way over on its side and go under.

Once I finally made it past the obstacles, the road looked like this for miles, the canal always on my left.

I learned it's called the Southern Glades Trail.

These groups of palm trees were spaced exactly one mile apart. There were usually four, but sometimes three trees.

These piers are spaced evenly along the canal. I thought them odd because there's absolutely nothing on the other side of the grass but swamp, so what were they connected to?

When I stopped for a snack break I saw this guy hanging out on the other side. He was so unmoving, unblinking, that I thought he was dead... until he very slowly slid into the water towards me.

The canal was on the left and these, also evenly spaced, were on the right.

By the time I got off the path, I had determined that it was definitely the right choice. As I was riding, I realized that for the first time since this trip began, it was quiet... I couldn't hear a single car, and it made for a very pleasant ride.

Once off the path and onto the road I had no shoulder, but no traffic, either.

I couldn't tell what these were. It appeared someone had individually wrapped the (?fruit?).

The only glitch getting to my hotel was that I was routed to a location where there was no road. Literally, it just stopped, with no way to traverse it, so I had to backtrack.

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Today's ride: 34 miles (55 km)
Total: 144 miles (232 km)

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