Flamingo, Monroe County

The idea came to me as I walked Rusty around the block where we keep our ten foot storage locker in Miami. It’s the space that contains all our worldly goods not stowed aboard GANNET2. We have 50 square feet, upstairs to avoid floods, air conditioned against humidity, a space any homeless person could call a comfortable home but that we use to keep surplus artworks, books, clothes, small bits of furniture, kitchenware, stuff we could use to build a small home when we have to stop traveling. $100 a month which may or may not be well spent…

As Rusty and I walked the issue of  where we might spend the night came into my head. When you live in a van you know you are a nomad if the question intrigues you rather than vexes you. To find a spot is my job usually unless Layne  has a definite desired destination in mind. Geography and history are my favorite subjects so I’m one of those nerdy people that likes to explore maps and travel articles and find lesser known oddities to visit. I am the expedition researcher. 

The plan was to arrive in Key West after Fantasy Fest, during the tourist lull before winter sets in Up North and all the grandparents say goodbye after the holidays and come south to arrive “on island.” We however we’re ahead of ourselves. So I thought of Flamingo, as you do when you want to pause before bursting into the Keys. 

I hadn’t been there in years as we usually were in a hurry to leave home or get home without side trips,  but right now seemed the perfect time to drive the Everglades. So we did. 

In the popular imagination the Everglades look like a chintzy B Movie set in a cypress swamp filled with creepy crawlies and weird toothless iconoclasts and hermits armed to the teeth with guns living in loathsome muddy shacks far from civilized society. Marjorie Stoneman Douglas actually described the Everglades best as “a river of grass,” in her immortal but largely unread book. Most of it looks like this:

The fact that the Everglades are critical to Florida’s ability to purify fresh water, feed lakes and rivers and protect the peninsula from storms doesn’t do much to get the marsh the respect it deserves. Things are better than they have been and Florida moves by reluctant fits and jerks to keep the river of grass functioning but there are far too many interests in the state that want canals and not free form fresh water movement. 

As much as agricultural corporations deny it the fertilizer run off from the mainland drifting through this swamp causes coral die offs in the Keys. Its surprising to be in Flamingo and know you are just thirty miles north of Marathon, half a day’s drive away. The two places are so different yet so connected by the water that flows through here. And just outside the park it’s all farmland in Florida City and Homestead. They love throwing that precious water in the air:

Layne thought a pause at the southern tip of the Mainland was a good idea so off we drove, tangled in rush hour traffic on the turnpike, struggling to reach Homestead and Highway 9336 to Flamingo.

When Florida was purchased from Spain in 1819 not only did the US buy a large tropical swamp but also the peculiar coastal panhandle that these days looks and feels more like Alabama than Florida. Tallahassee was the capital not least because it was the most livable place in a state composed largely of impenetrable bog filled with bolshie Indians and runaway slaves. Key West could have been the capital with its benign climate and access to the trade routes but it was deemed too isolated. 

However the territorial lawmakers figured Key West would be the seat of southern Florida government considering how impenetrable and unlivable were the bogs south of Lake Okeechobee  so Monroe County in those days was vast as you see above in a map dated 1825.  

Those who even notice that Monroe County covers more than the Keys do sometimes ask themselves why Key West is the county seat for Loop Road and Flamingo and as you can see that is all that is left of the huge slice of mainland that was Monroe County once upon a time. As people discovered how to live in south Florida not least by having a couple of Indian Wars they carved out new counties for themselves and Monroe shrank to what it is today. 

By the time we arrived at the entrance to the park the booth was closed with a sign asking us to pay the entrance fee online. Easy for us as we have the old folks annual pass which allows us into all national parks for free.

The two lane road to Flamingo is about forty five miles long, a series of long straights with gentle curves and no shoulders and open views and a 55 mph speed limit. Friday evening saw hardly any traffic so it was a pleasant cruise. There is no sign welcoming you to Monroe County “home of the Florida Keys” but there is a different watershed marked along the park road. 

There are pull outs and kayak launch spots and picnic areas and trail heads as you might imagine. Our Verizon signal faded slowly the deeper we drove. 

The roadside billboards show the distance to Flamingo or to the park entrance depending on your direction of travel. Of the two campgrounds, Long Pine or Flamingo,  we chose the one deepest into the park, on the shore of Florida Bay. One phone call (855-708-2207) and we had a $55 dollar spot(!) with electrical hookups to run the air conditioning without flattening our battery bank. 

It’s low tourist season in Florida and the campground was mostly empty. The first campground is for tents with no hook ups while the RV area has all the facilities in one area and no hook ups in the other both served with cold showers which are not a burden in the heat. I found them refreshing. 

Flamingo has a sense of wilderness that is out of proportion to its distance from Florida City. I felt slightly surprised to see such order and organization carved out of the wilderness of swamp, alligators and mosquitoes. The cold shower isn’t fancy but it was spotless and highly functional, the camp spots for RVs are lined up and organized in lines, decently far apart. The sky was black and the stars were out. And so were the mosquitoes! 

Our netting kept the bugs out but also killed the breeze so we buttoned up and turned on the cooling air. It occurred to me many people come to Flamingo for a vacation, a break from the routine. We by contrast were enjoying the luxury of shore power compared to our usual style of wilderness camping completely self contained. 

The old visitor center is slowly being restored after it was wrecked in distant 2005 by Hurricane Wilma. It is classic old Florida style and I’m sure it will be beautiful when restored. But for now it’s closed. 

It was a quick overnight for us, starting to get acclimated to hear and humidity, enjoying the greenery and the sense of abundance that is south Florida. The end of rainy season isn’t the best time to visit the Everglades, the swamp is full of water. But it’s beautiful stark beauty to me. 

Up next: Back to the Keys.