Niles Is a common name in the Lower Keys, not least because the GM and Nissan dealer in Key West goes by that name. At Mile marker 26 there is a forty-foot tall span that crosses Niles Channel, and on the north side of Summerland key there is a hidden roadway that goes by the same name. Its quite tricky to find as one has to take Horace Road (really!) off Highway One and make a couple of ninety degree turns through a sleeping trailer park.
If you can tear your eyes off the sleeping woofer you can see Niles Channel Bridge in the background. I had been turned on to the possibility of some off road tracks by a young kid I met recently doing doughnuts in his truck when I was out exploring some other dirt tracks. Niles Road itself is the usual more or less straight line between mangroves:
I really like these roads, smooth and slightly curvy with few homes and a gentle breeze whistling through the branches. Sometimes I wish they went on further. Other times I wished that when I reached the end I was alone. But here, after a mile of paved road I found these two huddled with their pedalo boat, an unsuitable craft for windy salt waters:
Sometimes you just get a bad vibe and I don't know what these two were up to but whatever it was I didn't want to leave my motorcycle alone with them so I bagged my planned hike into the bushes where the paved road runs out and I turned back towards civilization, without turning the engine off. Civilization consists of a couple of unoccupied homes and a couple with signs of life. This one looked wrecked but when i stopped to shoot the "picturesque" trailer i observed the house had signs of movement behind the mosquito netting on the porch. So, again, I rolled away without giving anyone time to ask me to move on. It was getting to be a theme of Niles Road.
Then I spotted the dirt road turn off and finally found myself alone with Nature, on the peculiar marl particular to the dry season mangrove swamps:
So I worked my way through dry clay rutted by four wheeled vehicles, careful to keep my street Bonnie on the high side.
And it wasn't long before I hit moisture, deep water close in to shore as though it had been dug out by human hands, but in the process of being reclaimed by nature, as always:
And of course there is always human debris around in these places. Actually it was abundant and somewhat varied. First I found evidence of human ill treatment, a horseshoe crab used for sport. Its underside was pretty complete so it looked as though it had been plucked live and impaled, but perhaps I am reading more into than I should. Bored kids I suspected, for no reason other than I am extrapolating more than I should:
I tossed the baked little body back into the water where it sank slowly out of sight, a small Viking funeral. And if it was kids playing with the crab, then their elders and betters had been using this pristine spot as a dumping ground, ignoring the threat of a five hundred dollar fine as posted on signs along the roadway. A school bus roof? Priceless if not picturesque.
And more, so much more:
I even found a hillock a full six feet above sea level, and the altitude made me giddy scrambling up through the gravel, feathering the clutch, sliding the motorbike as I went:
I took the time to shoot a few more pictures of the Bonneville, and I confess I always like the look of the thing from the front, the aggressive tire and big round headlamp, very old fashioned I think. And in such surroundings too:
Further along I found an untouched trail, no signs of tire marks in a long time and the mud was smooth and flat, pierced by a few mangrove nematodes only:
And then back to the main road along the gravel trail:
And then back to the paved Niles Road, back towards the trailer park and sleeping dogs and busy fishermen and all the rest:
Highway One is overly busy during Spring Break with vehicles crowding the Overseas Highway in both directions at all hours, endless snakes of cars plodding to and from the bars of Key West. Luckily I had not far to go to get home and tend the sunburn brought on by my adventures. So little land so much fun. On a road bike no less.
