October 14 to October 21, 2016—Key Largo and Bahia Honda.
I had planned on staying in Flamingo, FL in the Everglades National Park. After some review we ditched that plan. The mosquitoes are still very much in season there (next month would have been better) and thanks to the hurricane some spots opened up in the state parks in the Keys.
We booked three nights in John Pennekamp Park in Key Largo. The camp is a very small part of what is a vast marine preserve of one the US’s largest coral reefs. A few miles north of the park you start to see those patches of emerald and blue water that you don’t see elsewhere in the US. The keys, the thin islands that stretch from the end of mainland Florida to Key West, are unique environments not just in the US but in the world. Subtropical plants and animals mix with temperate climate species in a variety of habitats that are constructed on fossilized coral reefs, some of which are old enough to have developed something like soil. So you have two foot long emerald green iguanas not far from the only endangered pine forests in North America. (The iguanas were a frequent sighting but not so frequent that we could look away from them.)
We bicycled mostly, as the water was uninviting—very turbulent with wind and filled with icky vegetation. We spent a few hours at Dabney Johnson Nature Preserve which had very well-thought-out signage with information about the peculiar flora of the area. The preserve is home to many national champion trees because this is the only place in the US where these Caribbean species will grow.) Looked forward to snorkeling, which I had only done once before (with Lucy in Puerto Rico) and found otherwordly, but the tours were canceled because of high winds. Ate Stone Crab claws, the crab from which the fishermen only harvest one claw and return the crab to the sea to grow another. Talk about a sustainable harvest. An excellent crab, make no mistake, but for the price, myeh.
Perhaps you heard of the Screwworm outbreak here? Our visit coincided with the beginning and hopefully the height of the disease outbreak. It is an aggressive fly-born disease thought to have been eradicated forty years ago. I’ll spare you the details of the screwworm biology but its main effect here is to threaten the 1,000 remaining individuals of the Key Deer population—a diminutive deer that roam some of the keys, strolling comfortably among humans without looking for a handout. We had to pull over at an agriculture department barricade, exiting the keys, because we had pets with us.
Took a day trip to the Everglades National Park, an amazing place. I guess I’ve been told my whole life that the Everglades is a vast, slow-moving river but it never registered. I thought it was a swamp. Really it is a Serengeti of water, fifty miles wide, flowing perceptibly slowly through a sea of grass and cypress islands. At one overlook the other visitor was an African, a Nigerian by my guess, and he was excited about the resemblance to the plains of his country, saying he wouldn’t be surprised to see an elephant walking in the distance. In fact an elephant could walk on it as it flows only a few inches deep over a solid limestone base. This is also the only home of the American crocodile, living with the more common alligator. All kinds of cool environmental stuff going on here. Makes you want to blow up the Tamiami Canal, the Everglades Highway and the dike around Okeechobee. Of course then you could only get to the Everglades by boat.
We decided to push further down into the keys, as there were now openings at Bahia Honda state park. This is another ninety miles, maybe, south, and the now the water is really turning gem-like colors. Good swimming in crystal blue water, but not deep. Another place that made us glad we bought bikes (although we barely have room for them, having to store them in the trailer itself when we move) which made some remote beaches accessible to us. Saw a guy reel in a three foot shark on hook and line. Swam in waters only a few feet from pelicans. Snorkeling dives canceled here, too, because of winds. Drat.
Back in Pennekamp park in Key Largo we had gotten friendly with a couple who’s traveling situation was like ours. From Michigan, in their forties, they decided to take some time traveling the country in a small fiberglass egg-shaped trailer. In their case it was a Trillium, a product of a defunct Canadian company, very much like a Scamp. They had started in December, planning on doing a year’s travel, but were thinking of carrying on past December because things were going so well—he was able to continue contributing to the business he half-owns and he and his wife hadn’t murdered one another. There were very much like us. They differed in their younger age and their habit of doing strenuous exercise routines in the morning, but I try not to hold the conditions of people’s birth or their religious practices against them. We might see them again in Albuquerque in December.
If I have one reservation about Florida it is that I am uncomfortable doing nothing here. Elsewhere I have no trouble sitting in a chair staring at what’s in front of me or reclining to look at the night sky. Here it seems somehow wrong. The environment here foments lassitude; when I am busy doing nothing I want to feel like I’ve earned the time or stolen it, not that it seems like the natural thing to do. Perhaps a bigger part of it is this: at home, a day of perfect temperature with a crystal blue sky and a warm gentle breeze is a day to savor; you take your time to enjoy doing whatever it is you are doing and feel like you have received a gift. In Florida almost every day is like this and feeling that you have received a special gift every day can tire you out after a week. There is an angst latitude somewhere north of Savannah, Georgia where I belong.