Keys to My Heart: (As usual, pics are up on SmugMug. Lots of alligators and birds in this set.)
One of the single most troublesome qualities I have is the inability to fall asleep when I need to. Before any important event and nearly all unfamiliar situations, I find that I tend to lie awake until about an hour before the alarm goes off. In some instances where the lack of sleep itself is the issue, I can lie awake at night wondering why it is I lie awake at night.
I'm choosing my words carefully because I don't think is it apprehension that causes it. If I am apprehensive, I certainly will lie awake, but it doesn't have to be anything I'm apprehensive about. To wit, I had a 6:30 AM flight down to Ft. Lauderdale. If there is anything I would not be apprehensive about it would be flying. It's not a new experience. I know the drill. I was all packed and ready. I needed only to rise at 4, get dressed, grab my bags, and leave.
Yet here I was looking at the clock at 3AM, knowing that I have essentially pulled an unwanted all-nighter.
So the day's travel -- park and fly at DTW (with an early morning slice of quiche), plane change in Charlotte (with a Jamba Juice), renting the car and driving from Ft. Lauderdale to Key Largo (way to many toll booths), a bite of road food (somewhere), get checked in to the Ramada -- was all done with swollen eyes and blurry vision. The best effort I could muster was to get down to the pool and sit out for a while in the late afternoon then scarf down some conch cerviche and a beer and go to sleep. So much for day 1.
I slept wonderfully that first night, got up late, hopped in the white Dodge Avenger rental and made for the river of grass, where I stopped at the Shark Valley station of Everglades National Park. I almost turned back; there was an enormous wait to get in the park due to their parking lot being full. A strange experience -- I have never encountered a wait like that at a National Park before, and I've been to a few. Scuttlebutt is that with everyone scrimping and saving, the parks are looked at as a good budget destination. They are. Fortunately I was able to park along the highway just outside the park and walk in.
To the casual tourist, the point of the Everglades is alligators, and that's what you get at Shark Valley. Hundreds of them. Roaming free. Lying about without a hint of fear or notice that homo sapiens is walking among them. You get so acclimated to them that you don't think twice about walking within a few feet a 13-footer laying on the paved roadway. The only reaction you will get is a stare from a dead-eye for a few seconds, then you are ignored once again.
The main loop though Shark Valley is a fifteen mile paved road. It is a popular biking route, and you can rent bikes right there (although I didn't notice this until I was leaving). You could walk it too I suppose, but there is a fine tram service the runs the loop and is narrated by some excellent guides. At one point the tram stops and the guide walks out into the swamp, inviting others to come. Of the maybe forty people on the tram, three actually followed. I was one. Thank God for gore-tex day hikers. I would have expected to sink knee deep in muck, but he water itself is crystal clear only about ankle deep. Beneath that is a very thin layer of settled muck. And beneath that is some very precarious limestone -- uneven and slightly slippery, it's all about balance if you want to avoid a youtube moment, but it is very solid footing.
The 'glades are not exceptionally picturesque. There are no gnarled, moss-covered trees casting eerie shadows, like you get in the Georgia and Carolina swamps. In fact, I wouldn't suggest this place for a Hollywood swamp. It is, as the phrase goes, a river of grass with pockets of sediments formed into little islands, just barely high enough to support impenetrably dense shrubbery and bits of fauna. Apart from that it's pretty much all sawgrass and shallow open sections punctuated with gator holes.
And fish -- tons of fish. And big birds and turtles to feed on them. The place is just teeming with life -- so many alligators I have to wonder if they aren't feeding on each other. It's also a birders paradise; half the folks on my tram were binocular-wielding bird spotters. There are enormous cranes of all shapes and sizes and colors. You see the mother gator protecting her little babies, and the birds feeding their young. It the kind of stuff you figure they must spend days to get on film for the wildlife shows. And none of this is Disney. The gators don't show any interest in the people but when you walk within a few feet of a 12-foot gator you should be very aware of what end of the food chain you occupy. I'm pleasantly surprised that such an activity is allowed in our world of airbags and bicycle helmets.
At the midway point on the trail is an observation tower from which you get a 360 degree view for miles around. Shark Valley is a great all-round experience. Here's how I would do it in the future. Rent a bike and ride behind the tram, since it stops wherever they spot something interesting. Bring a picnic lunch and hang out by the observation tower at lunch time. That'd be about perfect. I continue to be amazed at the National Park System and all the opportunities it provides.
Day 3 began with a trip about 2/3rds down the Keys for Bahia Honda State Park. Rumored to have one of the few nice beaches in the Keys (the Keys are very short on good beaches). It actually has a fairly narrow beach that is currently covered with some sort of ugly brown nettles a foot-and-a-half thick washed up on the shore. It's not dangerous or icky, just ugly. The water is clear but the undergrowth comes in about 25 feet off shore. It's fair for splashing around and maybe a bit snorkeling, but that's it.
Which is not to say the park isn't worth a visit. For all its beachy shortcomings it's a very pleasant place. You can rent a kayak and paddle the entire circumference of the key (although high winds prevented that the day of my visit). There are birds wandering the grounds and a tangled brushy area that contains about a half dozen big-ass iguanas trolling around, climbing the trees and such. The whole park is framed by the old Bahia Honda Bridge, which is now a walkway to a scenic outlook from which, if the water is clear, you can supposedly see sharks (I didn't).
But I did lie in the sun and read and swim and be all summery with myself for a couple of hours. Very much needed after weeks in the evil northern winter. Then, since I was 2/3rds of the way there, I decided to make the short drive all the way to Key West.
The thing is, there is no short drive to Key West. No matter how close you think you are, you are at least an hour away. Although it is quite lovely in many places, crawling along Route 1 into Key West is one of most frustrating drives you can take. The speed limit drops to 35 and even if it didn't, it's one lane -- no passing; you will always get stuck behind the slowest common denominator. You read the mile markers as they fall at a snail's pace, and your goal always seems just out of reach.
I finally made it into Key West with enough spare time to snag a burger and a beer on Duval St. before a walk down to Mallory Square for the sunset. Key West remains Key West, good natured revelers left and right, street performers hamming it up for the touristas, all the gaff-rigged schooners loaded down passengers for sunset, their square rigs silhouetted against the blinding sun. About perfect: a just reward for making the deadly tedious drive across the Keys.
On my last day I was once again going to try for a kayak tour but, once again, the wind wound up too high and no one would rent to me. Florida let me walk among gargantuan primordial predators but would let me take a kayak out in the wind. Go figure. So I did something I almost never do on my trips: nothing. I spent the better part of the morning and afternoon in the sun just reading. I didn't give in to the temptations to do a snorkel trip or drive up to Biscayne Bay. I even took a brief nap. I got slightly sunburnt and I certainly made up for any lost sleep. I also healed up a bit -- it's amazing how many minor aches and pains ease up after three days of pretty much complete inactivity.
The only effort I made was to drive off to the legendary Alabama Jack's for a seafood platter. Alabama Jack's is situated just beyond a tool booth on the Card Sound Rd. so in essence you pay a buck to get through the toll booth, stop almost immediately for dinner, then pay another buck to get back. Hmmm. Not only that Alabama Jack's seafood, like just about all the seafood outside the hoity-toity restaurants, is battered or breaded and fried. I'm not a big fan of that, but 'Bama Jack did it about as good as can be expected. The conch fritters were top notch and tasty. 'Bama Jacks is situated right on the water; open air (they close shortly after dark when the 'skeeters get active); filled with fishing ephemera; you sit on plastic white chairs that they probably got for 1.99 each at the local swap meet -- that kind of place, yet the crowd was not rednecky at all; lots of oldsters and locals. Recommended.
And that was that. Back in my hotel room the TV showed record cold and snow waiting for me up north. Can I have one more day? Just one more day please...
