Driving The Everglades

It’s popular to mock Florida for any number of reasons, and there is plenty that is entirely  bizarre that goes on in the sunshine state. I can’t say that I mind laughing at prototypical goofball Florida Man memes and the recent political advertisement hailing the Governor as God’s anointed savior struck me as laughably blasphemous but there again this is Florida. Blasphemy is just another meme.  The bits you don’t hear about are what make this state extraordinary. 

A wildlife refuge on water utility land is a feature of camping life in the Sunshine  State. Make a reservation online and spend the night or the week absolutely free. Dinner Island has a vault toilet and that’s it. I drove in an hour before sunset and by 6:30 the campground was pitch black and silent. I buttoned up GANNET2 as there were a few mosquitoes about and spent a silent and night in the marshes. 

My neighbors never really appeared from the three occupied campsites but I wasn’t up with the larks. By the time Rusty and I appeared the sun was giving the world a lovely golden glow. 

This is  a different Florida from the Keys, oak trees scattered in fields, mist and morning dew and fresh water only. 

I like pastoral central Florida a great deal. One of my regrets is I never got to see a rodeo in cowboy country. Maybe when we get back. 

A short drive in crushed limestone dirt roads got me back to pavement the way we came in the afternoon previous, this time with GANNET2 spattered with suggestive white mud. Hardcore off roading it isn’t but it could look like it!

Yes I know Florida’s back country has a lot of straight flat roads but in a van you got to look out from a higher vantage point. Cows grazing, scattered farm houses and you are a world away from condo covered beaches and eyesore advertising. 

My goal for the morning was to check out the Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki museum, first visited by me  in 2013 

https://conchscooter.blogspot.com/2013/10/ah-tah-thi-ki-museum.html?m=0

The tribe decided to put the museum right in the village rather than seek to draw more visitors by sticking it in the casino they own on the east coast. The idea was to create a museum to illustrate the traditional life of the Seminoles in the place where they lived it. 

I took a walk on the mile long boardwalk in back of the building and checked out the plants carefully labeled. And the crafts on display in the village. 

I had the museum to myself and I enjoyed wandering the displays and dioramas. 

Jimmie Tiger was elected chairman of the Seminoles when they first started demanding recognition as a tribe with claims to a reservation in the Everglades. He worked out a plan to force the reluctant Federal officials’ hands. By going to Cuba!

Not only did his plan to fit recognition work but once again the administration of President Nixon took action unimaginable today. In addition to protecting the environment with clean air and water acts he also recognized the Indian right to self determination and autonomy. You can read all about it in the museum. And no one ever described Nixon as anointed by God. Times and sensibilities have changed. 

I enjoyed the museum as always and highly recommend it. They proud to have survived in the Everglades unconquered and to still be around with their own government and way of life. 

Grinding corn was not a job for weaklings apparently: 

Rusty was asleep under the air conditioning in the van. We set off north to our next reserved but free campsite near Inverness. More long straight roads into the heart of Florida. 

Secret Everglades And Holey Land

I like to study maps which makes me a nerd UNLESS I act on that studying, which makes me an explorer. Which explains how it was that I got to drive across the Everglades, not on Tamiami Trail, nor yet on Alligator Alley, but instead of all that asphalt end ease I took my car and my wife and my dog here:

On the Seminole Reservation at the western end the dirt road is called Huff Bridge and there is a street sign, but that's all. It doesn't have a sign saying "Highway 27- 25 miles" and twenty of them are dirt. Highway 27 goes south and intersects I-75, the Florida Turnpike and Krome Avenue. Highway 27 is a useful road to know, and this dirt road knows it.

What a great road, flat straight and reasonably smooth at speeds close to fifty miles per hour.

I learned years ago when riding in Africa, particularly in Niger, Nigeria and Cameroon, that keeping up a steady speed around fifty smooths out the "washboard" bumps that stretch across the roadway. It was slightly surreal buzzing smoothly along in the relative luxury of our two wheel drive, air conditioned Fusion sedan while outside the ninety degree wilderness sped by like a movie.

You can see this bridge in Google maps so I knew we were on the right path, as though there was a choice...

I'll tell you what, this road was a thin gray line on my phone GPS! Ain't technology great? In the days I'd have taken off after checking my map and doing my best. Nowadays you can take a quick check of your phone. Weird.

The Rotenburger wildlife area came up first. It was simply a sign by the side of the road, one at each end and that was that.

I think this Canal is labeled Dade County #5, but all I can imagine is that it was cut as part of the grand reclamation scheme designed to drain the Everglades. Nowadays the theory is the Everglades need to be restored, too little too late as usual. The state and the Feds have agreed to restore desperately needed wetlands but as for money...well...um...business as usual.

Along this section at the top of the levee that contained the canal the bulrushes grew thick and quite tall.

There was no civilization apparent, as the miles rolled by, Cheyenne asleep in the back, WLRN on the radio playing Saturday afternoon NPR. Then a pump station appeared:

And we drove right through the installation.

We drove to the end of the canal into a paved turn out so I could take a picture...

And so at last we came to Holey Land, a space much beloved by off road riders in South Florida. The odd name comes from craters in the land. They are said to have been caused by military shelling during exercises, but I rather suspect the holes are geologic in this rather odd wet landscape. As we stent off toad riders we left.

This was just a reconnaissance and I had been up all night working and had spent the day at the Seminole a Reservation so I was ready to put feet up at the dog friendly La Quinta in Fort Lauderdale. Stopping was not on the program this day.

We met one solitary vehicle on our 25 mile exploration, a 45 minute journey. The pick up truck was ahead if us and pulled over yo let us by. I slowed massively to reduce the dust cloud and then took off again after we passed him, stationary at the side of the road going in our same direction. I guess we were in a hurry, oddly enough in such a lonely place.

About twenty miles in and five from Highway 27 we reached pavement. I love pavement and now that my street is torn up for sewer installation I miss clean smooth, dust-free asphalt. We turned off to check a recreation area. "I suppose we should now we're here," my reluctant wife mumbled.

Groups of people were hanging round, presumably urban dwellers learning the joys of nature (and how to kill it) in the more or less wild.

The open space was named for Harold A Campbell a water district employee killed in a vehicle accident on Highway 27 in 2006. A kind thought no doubt.

I don't know if they think of him but they seemed yo enjoy coming out here five miles from Highway 27.

These cheerful fishermen walked out into the cleansing ponds to try their luck.

Cheyenne wandered off for a cooling dip and I worried about alligators but I figured modern society being what it is if there were any chance of gators in the water the place would be plastered with warning signs. We did fine.

And plodded back to the patiently waiting wife in the car. She was not thrilled by this deviation from the drive to the hotel.

Civilization was represented by the appearance of Highway 27, a four lane road that cuts across the Everglades from Lake Okeechobee to Miami.

The turn off to take the dyke road to the Seminole Reservation isn't marked but it can be found at the southernmost edge of Palm Beach county. Driving north on 27 make a u-turn after you leave Broward County and pass the Palm Beach County sign and this will be the westbound entrance to the mysterious road, five miles paved, twenty not paved.

It was an easy straight drive to La Quinta.

Where Cheyenne had fun going on a hunt.

Her reward for her patience while we went exploring.

Florida Keys on Dwellable

 

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Seminole Photography By Julian Dimock 1910

I missed this exhibit on my most recent visit to the Ah Tah Thi Ki Seminole Museum but when we came up to check out the cultural jamboree we made time to see the photography exhibit before it left the Evergladees.

Temporary Exhibits Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Seminole Indian Museum Clewiston, FL

I had no idea who Julian Dimock was and even less of an idea when he was in Seminole Country taking pictures. It turns out it was in 1910 when the American Natural History Museum organized an expedition to unexplored Florida swamps to see what was what. It's hard to imagine a century ago these places were barely known except to Indians and descendants of runaway slaves who made a home for themselves here, as well as renegade whites making a living on the margins of this watery world.

Julian Dimock was the expedition photographer, 37 years old and a well known travel photographer. He took amazing pictures of the Seminoles, pictures that I could not do anything close to justice not least as they were under glass in a well lit exhibition space in the superb museum.

Dimock's pictures put me in mind of Clyde Butcher's modern landscapes frequently taken waist deep in the muck of the Everglades. Dimock and Butcher both celebrated the clouds of South Florida.

And the people. The Seminoles were rather wary of white people in their midst and Dimock ended up getting turfed out when they decided they had had enough of these weird explorers.

But the pictures were taken, and then developed under ice to keep the chemicals stable in the heat and humidity of the place.

A few years later Dimock tired of photography and with a collected of some 8400 to his name he quit and turned to other pursuits.

I'm glad we took the time to check these pictures out. An astonishing collection.

 

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