Bridge Jumping

Therese was visiting and wanted to go on a  walk with my very photogenic dog. So Rusty and I agreed: Sugarloaf Key was the spot. 

We parked at the entrance to The Loop Road and were delighted to see some poor soul got a parking ticket for a violation. I've never seen that before in this spot...suddenly it all feels rather hard core.

We walked over the bridge which was rather heavily populated by youngsters enjoying not being in school and we found some serenity at the edge of the Straits of Florida:

Rusty wandered the rocky foreshore a bit and we stared at the wasteland wondering who comes to the Keys to sit on a  beach?

It reminded me of the Netflix show called "Bloodline" which was recently renewed for a third no doubt excellent season and it will continue to be shot in the Upper Keys.

There's only so much you can do with some salt water, a bunch of rocks and some tufted mangroves so we...

...headed inland and wandered round the rather picturesque quarry:

Back at the jumping bridge, as it's known, the action had not abated.  Testosterone filled the air, and I was glad I am just an old guy walking my dog.

Therese and I watched hopefully as the youngsters lined up to win the fair maiden's hand. Or something. I like watching the peer pressure drive the youngsters over the parapet; I've seen it before.

This is a popular spot and rightly so...

Off he goes...

All is well.

The idyll of growing up in the Keys.

 Cheyenne liked it here too.

Never too late to have a childhood. 

Rusty Enjoys Water

I had to miss a car rally on the loop road this past Sunday and I wanted to watch them. They are a long standing tradition on this circular stretch of perfectly paved road, another of those failed developments that benefit us in hindsight. So I took Rusty for a walk instead.

It's all hit and miss with him at this early stage of our lives together. A huge friendly retriever came upon us on the trail happily padding ahead of it's owner. Rusty is not find of large dogs and gave it a snarl through my protective arms wrapped firmly around him. I am getting used to his quirks so when he runs off in terror I amble after him and when sense takes over from panic he comes to me and we sort the problem out.

He is prone to start suddenly when a leaf skitters behind him or a tree sways in the breeze. He must have had a hard life. I think in six months he will have found himself and realize the world isn't out to get him anymore. At this stage I'm glad he runs to me to look after him. Makes my life much easier.

"One day all this will be yours..."

Rusty has this funny little way of running, he bounces on the balls of his feet and his hind legs splay out a little as he hops along down the road silently and speedily. He is learning to keep an eye on me and work with me as we travel. He is adapting nicely but of course a distant jogger set his nerves jangling. She paused petted him and kept going.

Mike came by in hopeless pursuit of his pink wife and stopped to say hello for a second. He is a friend of Prissy in Paradise and visits from Pennsylvania to get away from the cold. And he is sorry about Cheyenne as he has read this page so one has to assume he is an all round good guy. But he had to go to chase the woman in pink, or as he put it to not get lapped by her.

What a handsome lad, Rusty not Mike.

Rusty found water and liked it.

I haven't been here in a while but I remembered the canal front walk back. The remains of a VW van turning to rust seem to have gone though unless I was looking the wrong way. I think it's part of gentrification as the back country loses all its long deposited trash in the woods.

You can see a few of the houses across the canal near Sugarloaf Drive. Had the developers had their way this would all be canal side homes.

The tide was rising as the canal was rushing inland.

Rusty went nuts when we broke out into the open, running back and forth and waving his big flag of a tail. I wishes I was younger and faster to give him a run for his money but he was ignoring me, running in circles and enjoying the wide open space.

This was to have been a canal filled with boats and docks and stuff.

The canal was over flowing its rocky banks and Rusty and I soon found ourselves wading in water that he did not like to drink. But he sure had fun leaping and running through it. It did me good to watch little Rusty let his hair down without a care in the world.

It got a bit deep in one spot and he started acting all timorous so I called him and waded on and sure enough he figured out a way forward to stay close to me.

Soon we could see some stick figures on the bridge, almost an hour and a half since we left the car.

They asked me if the water was cold, as they could see I had done some deep sea wading to get to the bridge. I hate those kinds of questions because I have no idea what constitutes cold to a person from Pennsylvania. Clearly they weren't paying attention to my pink Crocs flashing "stay away"signs at them.

The testosterone overcame inhibition and with the young women watching (and filming) they jumped.

The consensus was that, no, the water was not cold, it was perfect. I figured I must have been wading in some particularly cold patch. That or people from Pennsylvania are especially hardy.

I left them to it and to reap their hormonal reward from the interested distaff spectators.

There's a cold front scheduled later this week. I'd love it if I could get him down the path of doom on the other end of Sugarloaf. I haven't done that in years since I wore Cheyenne out on the trail and had to carry her...

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Loop Road

 If you want to see alligators mainland Monroe  County is just the spot. Mind you we drive half the 24 mile loop before we got to see any, and this beauty we found almost at the eastern end of the road.

The Loop Road is a mostly gravel road that curves south of Tamiami Trail for 24 miles and is home to Everglades wildlife, Miccosukee Indians. hunters and half a dozen families who technically live in the same county as the other 75,000 residents of Monroe County, which covers the Keys.

 It tends to come as a bit of a surprise to learn that Monroe (named for the distinguished 5th president of the US) covers a portion of the mainland in the Everglades. In the 19th century most of mainland Florida was deemed uninhabitable and the only city of any size in the south was Key West. So Florida south of Tampa was  clumped into Monroe County. Then as railroads, trails and pioneers penetrated the humid south lands the new arrivals created new counties carving pieces off Monroe County as they went. All that's left now is the area south of the red pin in the screen shot below. The National Park headquarters at Flamingo is the largest single settlement but a few families live along the gravel of the Loop Road.

The crumbling building  parked alongside Tamiami Trail, also known as Highway 41, is called Monroe Station as it was the stage for anyone wanting to walk south a couple of miles to the Monroe County line. It is now the abandoned western terminus of the Loop Road.

Loop Road is unlike any other road I have found in the Everglades and I've tried to ride and drive most of them.

The Loop Road is lined with relatively mature trees and shrubbery giving shade across the road in a most beguiling way. Most roads in this area are open, shade free and lacking in any sense of being forested.

Monroe County does not mark it's boundaries in any way whatsoever however Collier County does, so this marker shows where Monroe begins.

Baron Collier was the man who completed the  road from Tampa to Miami, subsequently known as the TAM(pa)-(m)IAMI Trail. It was the sole coast-to-coast connection south of Fort Myers when this road was completed in 1928. In return for bailing out the state, which ran out of funds, Collier got a county named for him. Alligator Alley further north was opened as a two lane road in 1968 when alligators routinely got creamed , hence the nickname.  In 1990 it was opened as a four lane highway as part of the interstate system, I-75. I remember when they were joining up the two halves of the freeway and where there is a big curve it was for a long time a dirt connection between the two halves, a construction site in the middle of the state. It sure seemed desolate.

Loop Road is actually State Road 94, not that anyone calls it that. I doubt many people think of this gravel trail winding through cypress swamps with glimpses of Everglades Prairie much of a state road.

Yesterday it was mostly overcast but temperatures reached 84 degrees on the car's thermometer. Winter is also the time when you will find the most traffic on Loop Road as tourism is hopping this time of year.

I don't think we were alone on any stretch of the roadway. Come back in May and all you will see are the trucks and trailers of hunters who take to the wilderness in fat tired all terrain vehicles. Me? I walk my dog but I keep her strictly on a leash around here and no swimming. That combined with no fast food wrappers makes for a less than stellar walk for Cheyenne.

Curves are not too much in evidence on the road.The surface was quite smooth and 30 miles per hour was a comfortable speed, as we had to get home in time for me to go to work later. Tourists were going slowly admiring birds and looking for dinosaurs.

It is a pleasant and evocative drive as long as they keep the surface graveled and smooth. Each time they pour gravel it tends to take a while for the cars to pound the pebbles into the surface and smooth it out again. 

 And here's one in her famous "alligator pose."

Florida's landscapes are not often appreciated by outsiders but I find a great deal of natural beauty in this flatland.

 And here we see the Monroe County residents behind their stockades in the wilderness.

 I can hardly imagine what its like to live here, buggy humid and filled with water.

 It even started to drizzle as if to make the point.

 This sign I don't remember from previous visits. Half way.

 Then the sun came out for a bit.

 And after all that my wife spotted a lagoon filled with dinosaurs.

Small ones and far away which didn't help me with my phone camera. A group of tourists were watching the alligators lying there watching them. It was rather like watching paint dry until one of them starting barking and grunting at the alligators as though trying to communicate with them.

I jocularly suggested he jump in to liven up the lack of action, and he being young and no doubt hoping to get laid offered to do just that. Cool I thought, I finally get to see someone drowned by an alligator. "They will just swim away," he announced confidently at an awestruck young female. Well yes, I thought to myself, unless mama gator is dozing under the ferns. I forbore from telling him about the two separate Miami housewives who went for a dip in canals behind their suburban homes last year, and got carried away by beasts like these. He didn't jump, more's the pity. We carried on in the car. With seven billion people on the planet all creatures have to do their bit to keep things under control and these alligators weren't helping the problem.

 Finally, after 18 miles of dirt we encountered the last six miles of paved road.

 Florida  curves. Not all roads are dead straight.

More Monroe County residents. After 911 the Miccosukee came up with a cunning plan. Apparently they don't get along all that well with the anglo settlers here because they set up a road block here as part of their support for the national security craze sweeping the nation. In order to avoid showing ID residents prefered to drive the long way round to get to the mian road rather than drive the pavement and show ID. The road block is still being set up apparently at dusk and is of dubious legality and annoys the Monroe County residents no end. It seems like the tribe likes to piss up a rope and they reportedly don't cut law enforcement any breaks either. Now it seems Indian tribes may soon get to grow and sell marijuana legally so I wonder what chaos will ensue. 

Tribal homes are all built to the same design specification which gives them an odd, uniform suburban look. They put them on mounds to keep them dry which seems sensible and they decorate as their tastes dictate.

Miccosukee are notoriously private and their more traditional villages on the Tamiami Tail are out of sight surrounded by tall fences closed to outsiders.

 They share their space with these guys:

And before we left the eastern terminus of the Loop Road we stopped by the artesian well, thoughtfully supplied with a soap bottle. The water smells of sulphur as these things tend to, and Cheyenne wasn't having any. For once she preferred clean filtered water that I offered her.

Back on Tamiami Trail we finally got to drive the new elevated section of roadway which we saw being built a few years ago. It raises the roadway above the grass allowing water to flow more naturally through the Everglades.

It's part of the huge reclamation effort to get fresh water flowing properly through the vast natural filter of south Florida and end the practice of rushing water through canals thus drying up the swamps. Slowly, slowly...

It was a welcome diversion from the usual cross Florida route on Alligator Alley, a very boring freeway that is fast and efficient and has two curves in a hundred miles. Much better to take Tamiami Trail with more time in hand and check out places like the Loop Road.

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