March 6, 2017 – Crossing the Everglades

Post date: Mar 06, 2017 3:57:5 AM

Some days travel is easy, some days it is hard, some days …it is like today…

            When doing my plotting of community colleges it was of note that there are few public community colleges on the southwestern peninsula of Florida.  There are a few in the central regions but none on the southern gulf coast.  It’s not that there are not people or need; it appears that in Florida on the west coast south of Tampa, all the technical schools are privately owned.  Florida State is in the region with multiple campuses but most of the technical schools I found in the region were private for profit or privately held non-profit schools.  These schools in general look different than a public college, or even a publically held technical school.   Private colleges only need to offer courses and do not focus their resources on amenities or student services so their campuses are smaller and often housed in simple office buildings or rented space.  There is no need for large student unions, libraries, hang out spaces athletic fields or recreation facilities.  

            At least this is my impression from the ones I have seen so far.   Later this week I plan on visiting a private school in Key West so perhaps that impression will change, but I started out the day in Sarasota and it being Sunday I did not plan on being able to visit any colleges public or private today.  Instead the plan was to cover distance and cross the everglades ending up in Everglades National Park.  Doing so would put me A) closer to Key West and the next school I hoped to visit and B) at another campground.  My resources are significantly drained, not only by motorcycle maintenance, but also by staying in urban areas like Tampa where hotel accommodations are expensive.  Having spent the last few nights with a roof over my head I was looking forward to getting back under budget and the stars.

            So the plan for the day was to travel the gulf coast ending up on the eastern side of Everglades National Park with enough daylight left to find a camping spot.  This seemed easy enough mileage wise so I did not rush the morning.  The day was warm with temperatures in the 70-80’s but there were strong winds gusting from east to west.  As I set out south on interstate 75 the winds picked up and were hitting me from a 45 to 90 degree angle.  For those of you who sail this might be seen as optimal but on a bike these types of side winds are the hardest to enjoy the ride in.  Riding directly into or with the wind is of minor consequence but when the gusts come from the side you have to constantly adjust so as to keep your path straight and not end up in the next lane.  As the winds picked up the gusts must have been in the 30-60 mph range and the ride turned into a white knuckle one…

            The winds were not due to a single front but slow moving high-pressure front up north so they were well sustained all day.  Temperatures on the other hand were increasing as the sun rose high and the day wore on.   Somewhere north of Fort Myers the interstate was closed for construction, and the southbound traffic was directed onto surface streets.  Now I do not know if this was due to it being Sunday or just not thinking it through but while there were ample state troopers around the freeway where traffic was being guided away from the construction, there was no traffic assistance on the miles and miles of surface streets the detours were being fed onto.  Every space on the Florida peninsula is a latticework of water and land.  In the area of the detour the water canals, channels and road pathways meant that there were bottlenecks even on the surface streets so that no one could avoid the backup.  Within minutes I found myself trapped in a traffic snake that had slowed to a crawl, then a standstill, then a crawl again.   The temperature on the bike started to rise to maximum being now out of the wind, and there was no way around the route, thanks to Florida’s lack of lane splitting laws for motorcycles, and bad detour planning,

            Eventually I made it through the cue back to the interstate a few miles down the road, but the time that was wasted had used up a good portion of the daylight.  I had done my planning.  The last stretch of the ride turned directly east through the everglades on route 41.  This section was said to be one of the nicest parts of the trip.  The road was a small two lane-ride through the heart of the marshes that goes for about 90 miles. 

             I stopped to gas up in Niece, the last main town before the everglades proper, where I met a nice Harley rider who was making the same run.   With two more hours of driving left to get across the marshes, we had both planned to be at this point much earlier than we were.  To make matters worse there were only a few hours of daylight left and there was a forest fire sending black clouds up just east of the town. 

            Earlier in the week Chris and I had seen a similar plume of smoke accompanied by a raging wild fire just west of Cape Canaveral.  I gather fires move quickly in these areas despite all the ground water.  When the winds and heat pick up there is just too much vegetation so things burn quickly just like in California.

             The ride through the glades was lovely.  Turning into the wind made it much easier to enjoy the scenery, which was not expansive due to the high vegetation on both sides of the road.  (I must apologize here for the lack of pictures today to accompany this post, due to the challenges of the trip, and the fact that when it was easiest to travel there were no good places to pull over to snap a photo).  Where the trees did give glimpses of the glades were where there were water channels, and as these areas flashed by I could see there was lots of life.  Channels rimmed with trees and tall grasses were also rimmed with egrets, fishing at spots where water and land met.  Not just a few egrets, but hundreds spaced evenly along every bank.  There were hawks and ospreys as well flying overhead.  Dozens of birds roosted in the trees high overhead.  I even spotted a few bright pink birds that at first I thought to be flamingos, but then realized were Roseate Spoonbills, as they were nesting too high up in the trees.  Just as the egrets spaced themselves along the shore so to did the humans.  Every gap in the road where a channel met road, was accompanied by a single parked car along the shoulder and one or two people, usually tucked under the elevated roadway in the only spot where a primate could get a fishing pole into the water.

            The diminishing daylight hours brought on regret at not having enough time to stop by one of the airboat tours that set out from docks along the road, for I could see this is the best way to see the marshes, from the water not the road.  By the time I got to the eastern side of the marshes I could see another plume of smoke rising from the east.  The smoke thickened the farther east I went until eventually I, and the Harley rider I had been following, rand into a roadblock.  A wildfire had started in the east as well and this one had jumped the road we were on.  Traffic straight ahead and to the right, down the road that was to take me to the camping grounds for the night, was being diverted to the north.  The Harley rider and myself pulled over for a bit to confer with some other bikers and a group of locals who were being kept from their homes a few miles up the closed roads. 

            It was clear the fire was strong and moving fast.  But of course the locals said they had seen worse and were peeved that the state troopers were not letting them get home.  The bikers all diverted north, into the Miami suburb traffic I was hoping to avoid.  In darkness I asked the GPS to once again direct me to yet another hotel that I can not afford...  Tomorrow will be another day…  and another adaptation to ever changing conditions.