We had just a 2.5 hour drive today to get to where we wanted to spend the night before we head up the eastern coast of Florida to Titusville. But one more picture of our views as we travelled down the Key West highway.
As we travelled through Homestead we found these people picking green beans we think.
We actually stayed in a casino parking lot with about 8 other RV’s and 5 trucks and 4 buses. Nice level lot with lights and security and, if we were so inclined like some of our RV neighbors, we could head into the casino for dinner or some gambling. And this view out our side window. Very nice.
But, it was 11:00 am and we wanted to adventure: there are several airboat rides along US 41 which crossed the top of the Everglades and there is also a tram ride into the Everglades NP which takes you 7 miles into an observation tower. We were excited about the air boat ride and were not so sure we wanted to take the tram tour since we had taken several tours in the Everglades area already. We weren’t sure it would be worth the $19 it cost. But, we were off, back down US 41.
Let me tell you a bit about US 41, the Tamiami Highway, from, you guessed it, Tampa to Miami, sometimes called the ‘Beauty and the Beast’ of Florida roads. If you want to get from Miami to Tampa, you can take either the fast dull way, Interstate 75, 75 mph from one place to another. Dull, dull, dull. About 21,000 people take this way daily. Or you can take the slow, scenic, tourist-trap way called the Tamiami Highway. the speed limit ranges from 35 to 55 mph and you can pullover to view the alligators sunning themselves in the canal lining the highway, or take one of the trails through the Big Cypress National Preserve, or stop to watch a man wrestle an alligator or take one of the many airboat rides along the highway. Several weeks ago we chose the slow, scenic way across and today we find ourselves on this same route as we drive to our two adventures. Lots of history behind this road, some of it good and some of it bad. It was hailed as a great engineering marvel when it was built since it crossed 70-miles wide ‘Sea of Grass’, the slough of water running southward from the Kissimmee watershed around Orlando through Lake Okeechobee and into the Everglades NP to the Biscayne Aquifer which supplies water for all of south Florida.
Have you ever brushed your teeth in Miami? Well, you’ve used some of this water.
It took 13 years to build, cost $8,000,000, used almost 3,000,000 sticks of dynamite and was a disaster in the making. When the state of Florida ran out of money to finish the project, advertising mogul Barron Collier came through and a county was named after him. He had grand plans to open southwest Florida to development. In the beginning, when the water ran over the road in the wet season, they just closed the road. Now, the road is too important and they purposely keep the water levels low around the highway. The whole highway has become an expensive long dam which is changing the ecology of the area and blocking the flow of water into the Everglades and into the Biscayne aquifer.
Here’s a picture of what I mean. You can see the Tamiami Highway and this canal. The highway is blocking the flow of water from the north to the south and this canal is diverting what water comes this way to the farmlands east of here. How is water going to be able to flow through all this to the Everglades and the aquifer? Well, it isn’t. And, this picture is looking the other way: miles of canal and Tamiami.
In 2005, The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers devised a plan to erect an Everglades Skyway – an 11-mile bridge to replace part of the road just west of Miami. but this takes lots of money and lots of time. Meanwhile a one-mile bridge was approved and is being built.
OK, that’s the history and now we’re looking for adventure. We, all 20 of us got into the airboat with out guide who, jokingly, admitted that this might be one of his first trips outside of training trips. I was disappointed that the boat was flat and that the front row could see but not us in the 4th row. Oh, well. We took off and turned down a channel in the sea of grass. The our guide asked if we would like a fast, wet ride or a slow, dry ride. When most of us voted for a fast wet ride, he gunned the engine, flooded it and we were dead in the water. Well, it was easy to take pictures since we weren’t moving.
He started the engine over and over - probably flooding it and killing it more. Even I know this much.
Finally, after 15 minutes, another boat came out to us to rescue us. We moved into the new boat row by row (they’ve obviously had this happen before since they knew exactly what to do) and we were off again. Still not much speed and he admitted it.
It was billed as exciting, it was billed as educational but it was neither. It was dull and the education he provided was ‘there’s an alligator.’
The day has to get better - and it did. We got to the Everglades NP, loaded up into the tram and were off. Here was a enthusiastic, trained naturalist, she knew the birds, their habits, their mating calls and practices, she could make alligator noises
and here she is, barefoot, out in the Sea of Grass to show us what it is composed of. We learned a lot about the Everglades and the ecology of this part of the park. We saw so much more wildlife here than we had seen in other parts of the Everglades and, actually, this was better than the boat ride we took last week.
She found a mama alligator with loads of babies - about 1’ long with their tail.
She was funny, too. While she was barefoot in the Everglades, she yelled ‘ouch!’ said ‘what bit me?’ and then held up a rubber snake. Funny. You can see in this picture how much enthusiasm she had. She was great.
Why are there no bunnies, chipmunks, squirrels and other smaller rodents in the Everglades? Because of all the Burmese pythons, an ‘exotic’ pet which was all the rage in the 60’s and 70’s. Let loose in the Everglades when they needed too much food and took up too much space in the proud pet owners home. Do you want a 20’, 400 lb python in your house? Between 2000 and 2012, more than 1950 pythons were removed from the Everglades and adjacent lands. Here is a picture from the Atlantic magazine showing how large they can become You can see how they could take over the Everglades - or anywhere else they lived. Several years ago they even had a contest to see who could hunt the most and the largest python in the Everglades.
A python vs an alligator? You can look online for pictures of this. They are gruesome. Sometimes the python wins, sometimes the alligator and sometimes they both lose. Not something I want to see or picture in this blog but the python is seriously damaging the ecology of the Everglades. The female lays about 35 eggs each year and each can live 30 years.
Back to our ride. When we got to the observation tower, we all got out and climbed. What a view over the Everglades.
And what a view down to the ground.
We then took a short trail and found this guy, just relaxing on a tree branch. Rattler. Luckily he was relaxing.
Gary’s getting used to alligators by now, ah, but not that used.
Then it was back to the VC and back to the RV. We had expected lots from the airboat ride and not much from the tram ride. We got little from the airboat ride except a funny story about being stranded in the Everglades and learned a lot on the tram ride. My advice? You can guess.
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