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. 

Leaving Key West

It wasn’t easy to leave Key West but I managed to tear myself away. Layne was in California with her girlfriends and I had almost two weeks to meet her in New Orleans to pick her up. I could have continued to sit in Ket West but I decided I had to move on up the road. So I did.

I left our last comfortable secure moochdock routine and took to the  Overseas Highway  at 4:30, passing familiar landmarks in the dark, pausing at the park in Tavernier to make tea and walk Rusty in the first golden light of day. I was sorry to leave, pushed by the inner voice telling me to explore. We will be back after Thanksgiving for a final round of friends before South America swallows us up. 

Homestead was illuminated by full sunlight when we stopped on the Main Street, an extension of Krome Avenue, and Rusty took his favorite walk; urban exploration. Homestead went through a period of expansion and bright commerce but downtown looks rather battered -aren’t we all?- by Covid I assume and uncertainty. 

iOverlander shows this levee as a spot to spend a free night alongside anglers and airboat tours. In the spirit of stopping to see everything I decided to check it out, a short distance west of Krome on Tamiami Trail. Turn off at the pump station and ride the gravel a quarter of a mile for splendid views of the river of grass. I made tea and Rusty sat around looking his usual princely self. 

Tamiami isn’t a special secret name. Barron Collier who paid to build the first road across the Everglades in the 1920s simply called it the Tampa to Miami road, numbered by the government as Highway 41. It passes through Miccosukee country and the tribal police are not fond of speeders as I found out to my chagrin twenty years ago at some ungodly hour of the night and wasn’t I surprised to get pulled over…

The first part of the 24 miles of Loop Road are in Dade county but they are also in the reservation and the homes above are standard Miccosukee style built up on flood proof (for now) mounds. After a few miles you enter Big Cypress Preserve part of Everglades National Park. You’ll notice the Feds have repaved  the road which is also in Monroe County though Key West has never bothered to put up County  markers here on the mainland. 

No alligators were molested  on this drive through their turf but the approach of the huge GANNET2 encouraged a few to spontaneously lurch off the grass into the water. Neither Rusty nor I dismounted in their presence. Just a respectful precaution you understand…

Loop Road is a series of smoothly traveled straight stretches joined by wide sweeping curves. Oncoming traffic can see each other from far enough away to figure out a passing spot. Patience is the name of the game on the 15 miles of gravel. 

I found I was not alone in enjoying the road through the woods. Personally I’m pretty sure you’d see as much sitting down in comfort in the air conditioning but an air of being on safari can bring it’s own pleasure. 

Some families have vacation homes on the cape or in Kennebunkport. Others share their inherited privacy with swamp critters…

Sweetwater Strand is the mother lode of alligator sightings. Enter Loop Road at the west end, at Monroe Station, for a much shorter drive to spot gators. 

And here they all are:

Alligators are dinosaurs and aside from being fearsome they don’t have much spare brain capacity to do anything that might be interesting to watch. They just sort of lie there immobile and unblinking. It’s worked for millions of years so why change the habits of eons past? 

The term “watching paint dry” comes to mind. They are much less dangerous than popular imagination  would have you believe. However if they should grab you or your dog it’s usually curtains so in my opinion the risk/reward assessment needs to be made very carefully. 

If you go to the shark valley observation trail you will see loads of them right at the edges of the paved trail and they are, or have been so far, entirely docile. 

I saw some youngsters swimming with masks in one of the strands next to the road. I waved and said nothing as I drove on by but better them than me. People tell me I am brave to travel to Latin America in a van. To me it is enjoyable and not at all scary where swimming with alligators seems neither sane nor pleasurable. 

Below you see an apartment sized pet. And yes some people do like to keep them as pets. And with so many stray dogs needing homes…

This sign post (looking south toward Sweetwater Strand) marks the boundary of Big Cypress Preserve and also the northernmost boundary of Monroe County, not that there is a sign to that effect. Collier County has inconsiderately abandoned the last four miles of the Loop Road to potholes and ruts, bad enough to cause a rental convertible to make a U-turn a short way in from Tamiami Trail.  

If larger vehicles like RVs lose their nerve there is a marked “last chance” turn out just past the toilets and picnic tables which are the only services to be found the length of  Loop Road, within sight of Highway 41. 

There once used to a gas station and restaurant in an old abandoned building called Monroe Station. I can’t find my pictures of the old structure so I found these on the web  with a link describing the  fascinating story of pioneer Florida motoring. An idiot with a camera and a desire to take night pictures accidentally burnt the building down in 2016 and now it’s a hunters’ parking lot. 

Check out the Abandoned Florida website for some great pictures and the full fascinating story of the Monroe Station so named as it was closest roadside service station to the northern tip of mainland Monroe County. 

https://www.abandonedfl.com/monroe-station/

Across the highway  is a typical Miccosukee village.  

Turn left to Naples and right to Miami. Rusty and I turned left heading for Dinner Island campground. 

Geiger Key

I read that the owner of Roostica and Hogfish restaurants sold Geiger Key Marina for fifteen million dollars.

I’m no businessman clearly but that seems like a great deal of money to pay off one sandwich at a time. I suppose the theory is when the restaurant love burns out someone else will come along and pay even more for this last slice of old Key West, the slogan appropriated by Schooner Wharf which is actually in Key West. This place actually does look like the funky tropics of decades ago. 

Like so much else in the Keys, I do like to visit this place and enjoy the views, and the blackened mahi-mahi was quite good but the idea of owning and coping with all this stuff seems overwhelming. You’d think 21 million would be enough to retire and enjoy something else. Power boat racing perhaps, but the former owner still serves food at his other two outlets, expressions of his ebullient personality.  

I discovered a new term to explain much of what I don’t understand about other people’s lives: relevance. I used to wonder why actors abased themselves by doing advertising. Relevance explains it. They feel the need to keep themselves in the public eye.  Politicians are the same when they join a band wagon. You’ve seen recently members of Congress sidelined for speaking their conscience. The ones that follow party orders get re-elected  and  stay relevant. I get a kick when I see Fury, the tourist behemoth,  still advertising their “ultimate adventure” on the waterfront. They’d better make it good if it’s the last thing you do…

To drop out, to live on a van with no fixed address kills all relevance. No longer living in Key West and photographing everyone’s favorite vacation destination makes me less relevant. I no longer work for the police. No good stories to tell, no status as a 911 operator.  Bliss.

There is the argument to be made that some people like their work so much they don’t want to quit and more power to them. Usually they make money out of proportion to the sweat equity of the job. People who stand at check out tills are there by necessity. People who own successful restaurants enjoy the relevance of contributing and being admired. I suppose that could be it. 

The irrelevance of not having roots confuses observers. We have been offered places to stay so we could get “out of the van for a bit.” I actually like the van. However next month we are renting a cottage for ten days in the Outer Banks, so…why? Because we can’t leave for Mexico till after the New Year and we needed to stay in the cold for a couple of weeks waiting for the family gathering and we figured if we have to stay put let’s be comfortable. The joy of van life is moving with the seasons. Sitting huddled inside in the cold is dreary. 

I’m writing this in a forest in north Florida, while my wife is in California with friends whose guest bathroom is bigger than the van. How long will you stay at Potts Preserve? she asked. I don’t know I said. It’s free, it’s quiet and it’s safe from hunters. I’ll know when it’s time to leave, there will be an itch, a desire to move on. It comes naturally. 

I find pleasure daily in the fact I have to please only myself. To me that is true freedom. I have enough to manage my life and no more. If someone dumped millions on me I wouldn’t know what to do. Money brings obligation my mother taught me, noblesse oblige, another way of saying to whom much is given, from them much  is expected. Bet you didn’t expect this atheist to quote the Gospel according to Saint Luke! (12:48). It’s a philosophy that seems to have been set adrift in our culture where poverty is viewed as a moral failing and wealth without obligation is a sign of God’s approval. 

I don’t know if abdicating one’s participation in normal life is a cop out or a morally acceptable choice. It feels acceptable to me as life continues pretty much unaffected by my absence, and will do so after I die no doubt!  I hope writing about travels other than Key West will provide some form of compensation or education to others but the journey is justified to me simply by virtue of being undertaken. To see, to learn, to feel. 

I suppose it’s fair to say I’d like to have more with which to do more good. However I noted how Mackenzie Scott is distributing to unsuspecting non profit agencies her share of the Amazon financial empire she married and divorced. A friend of mine shook his head mournfully saying a sudden infusion of money can screw up the delicate balance of tightly run small organizations. Yup, I thought to myself, it doesn’t matter what you do because good can be bad or thus perceived.  I’m not thick skinned enough to be in that kind of fire and notoriety and criticism go hand in hand. No YouTube for me.  

I’d better keep driving.