She's been the only disappointment, though. We have perfect Internet coverage (never gotten
all the bars before) and cell phone coverage. Took a trip up to Miami Beach the night we
arrived, then the Everglades yesterday and Miami again today. I really like the location, in that
way. I get the impression that most of the folks in this camp are temporaries, like us, but there are quite
a few that look permanent. The campground is a big field with a few trees and some narrow asphalt roads
dropped on top, electrical and water and sewer hookups placed haphazardly. Not quite a pit, but
the residents are giving it pit potential. Today I discovered lots and lots
of public housing just down the street, which might account for the chain-link fence around
this place...here are some pics:
This is our spot (taken without us in it); our neighbor is the white trailor on the right.
But on to the very positive stuff. Our first night here, we drove up to Miami to look around, and
ended up at an outdoor mall with a dock for yachts (so handy). Here's the pics:
It had a carousel and bungee jumping arena. Katie had to watch the big kids bungee jump and then
go on the carousel all by herself (first time). Then she went back to watching the jumping, and
she was so interested I looked at their info: you only had to be 20 pounds to jump, and it
looked like fun, so we let her do it. Here she is:
The guy helping her was soo patient with her, and really friendly. He'd high-five her when
she went to a new height, and he gradually worked her higher and higher till she was probably
20 feet in the air. She giggled the whole time.
At the mall there, I bought a tiny Samsonite case for my new laptop. It measured just the right size, according to the info on the case. But we got it back to the car (luckily my laptop was with us) and found out it was too small. I ran back to the store while Mark and Katie circled the block, and found out that they don't return items. Period. I was quite disappointed, and the manager made a big exception for me. So if you need stuff in the Miami area, the manager at Audio Video Communication Store is a good guy.
After the mall, we drove out to Miami Beach and drove along A1A, which is lined with art deco-
era hotels and apartments. They are so beautiful all lit up at night:
And it wasn't just a few buildings: it was block after block of beautiful 1930s architecture. You
can just picture women in furs and high heels with men holding their arm, strolling along
thinking about their wealth (and not at all about Ma and Pa Judd!) How all of it has survived
for so long without being bulldozed for something new and ugly, I have no idea. We cruised
and cruised and I wished we were millionaires so we could stay at the opulent-looking 30s
high-rise hotels along the beach.
So the next morning was Saturday, and we decided not to check out Key West on a weekend. Instead,
we went to check out a part of the Everglades we'd been told to see, and what a place it was.
We thought that the dirt road off Hwy 41 was a good place to see
wildlife, until we found the real place: Shark Valley in Everglades National Park. This place
is amazing. It has a 15-mile paved road that you can walk, ride your bike on, or take
an expensive tram ride on. We happened to bring our bikes, and that's the way to do it. All
along the trail, there is a ditch (created, presumably, when they dredged the swamp to make the
trail) that supports so much wildlife you'll get bored of gators and turtles and egrets before
you are through. here's pics:
The closest I'll hopefully ever stand to an uncaged gator.
Katie had to do it too.
The birds were magnificent. This blue heron was the only one I took a picture of, but you'd see
big egrets and other big birds every ten feet or so along the shore.
We even saw newly hatched alligators (mom was usually in the immediate vicinity,
so you can't get toooo close). I counted 13 in one nest, and there could have been more I
couldn't see. Apparently they hatch as many as 40 at a time. Mom keeps a close watch for two
years, then they're on their own. Dad is long gone by then.
Mom is watching us closely; see her?
Every so often, an alligator would be right by the trail. These two came up on us quickly, as
we made a turn in the road.
Turtles were rarer than gators, and of course cuter. Katie wanted to pet these:
Katie got bored eventually (it took us three hours to do the whole trail), but she really
enjoyed being able to get off the bikes and see stuff close-up. Here she is imitating the
birds we saw:
After biking 7.5 miles, we got to the observation deck. If you go to Shark Valley, you don't
need to bike that far, because here it is. Now you've seen it. Just do the first 5 miles of the
trail and you've seen the best stuff.
Sunday: Mark worked today, so Katie and I went to the Miami Children's Museum (an amazing building,
very modern and huge, but it seemed derivitive of other children's museums we've been to.
Maybe they'll all start seeming that way, but I hold out hope they won't.) She got to play
with clay, which was especially nice, and there was a huge art sandcastle you can climb up and
then slide down. That was cool. And they had a Subway sandwich shop attached on, which is smart.
So after spending a few hours there, Katie and I drove A1A up Miami Beach again, and I took a
few pictures in the daytime. I could see all the pretty pastels, but really the place looks
better in neon. Here's some pics:
Katie and I walked into the opulent Delano Hotel, to find a store which is supposed to
carry great laptop cases (didn't exist). The interior was fabulous: 30 foot ceiling with gauzy
white panels wafting in the light breeze, separating areas that had little but very big, modern,
soft furniture. Definitely HGTV. Then we walked out onto the beach for a few minutes, and
I got these shots of Katie:
There is a nice beachwalk and very nice white sand on Miami Beach. Lots of private umbrellas
for the hotels, and pastel kiosks selling alcohol and giving out towels. Felt rich. I let Katie
play in the big kiddie sandbox the Delano had set up for its guests, and I picked up a little
trash as pennance. Then we got back in the car, and I asked her if she was tired from our long
day. "No Mom"
Tomorrow we drive to Key West for a daytrip...
Here's Katie in back with Hello Kitty; playing peekaboo while we drive:
Here's what the road is like, driving out to Key West from the mainland:
The water is that green color, the islands are that small (some of them). Here's what the old
road was like:
It was built by Henry Flagler to take a railroad down to Key West, in around 1912. It was so
hard to build in places, and so expensive, that they called it Flagler's Folly. And then a
hurricane destroyed it in the 1930s, so they turned the old railroad bridge into a bridge for
cars. Here's a section that they left intact the way it looked back then:
I thought the decay was really pretty. Here are a couple more pictures (I wish I'd had more
zoom on our camera):
We stopped at Bahia Honda State Park (about half way to Key West) and had lunch and walked
around. Here's the beach.
They advertise it as the "second prettiest beach in the world." Does it look that pretty to
you? it didn't to us either. Pretty small and dirty with seaweed actually. But maybe it was high
tide.
The park was nice and I wish we had our tents & camping gear (Erin, you're right) so we could have
camped out for a night. There were plenty of spots for tents, and even couple for RVs that looked
open (I hadn't been able to make a reso), but the location's not great for exploring places
on the mainland. We saw the coral and sponge-strewn beach and then walked up to an old section
of the bridge that they have preserved:
While we were walking back, I said, it seems pretty safe for kids up here and Mark said, yeah,
as long as they don't try to climb up over the fence. We looked back at Katie and she was
doing this:
Once we got to Key West, we parked the car and rode our bikes around, saw the custom house
museum, which had an exhibit on Hemingway (an ex-resident for awhile, before he left for Cuba
with his third wife) and Cuba in the 1930s. Then we found the biggest cookie we've ever bought:
After driving around seeing the Victorian houses and the tourist shops, we headed for the
southernmost point on our map (the military had a better spot but I don't think we could go
there):
Then we had dinner. Mark ordered a hamburger that was as big as the cookie we ate, and I got the
best clam chowder I've ever had (at a tourist place that serves pina coladas out of a slushee machine,
oddly enough). The chowder had conch in it too, and was a little spicy. I could have eaten it
every day for a week. We left as the moon was rising. It was a nice day.
HR
The next day, Mark worked, so Katie and I checked out a place near our RV park that we'd driven
by over and over, along Hwy 1: Coral Castle. This was one of those places that they used to
show on That's Incredible or the one Leonard Nimoy was on, where maybe supernatural forces were
used to move huge stones. Really, it was the result of a very clever, obsessed immigrant pining
for a woman who left him at the alter back in 1912, in _____. He left for America, bought an
acre of land in Homestead for $12, and started cutting out the coral limestone below the surface.
He figured out how to get the blocks out of the ground, and built a garden for her (she was
invited many times, but never visited the place). He started charging folks ten cents to come
inside, and kept working on the place till he died in 1951. The thing is, he was my
height. He was five feet tall, and only 100 pounds (well, my weight in high school). I tried
imagining doing this place myself, by myself, and I couldn't. Here are the pictures:
Katie took this one of me. It's my favorite picture of myself.
There was a Cuban actor with a small camera crew, narrating with great flair, ala Liberace
perhaps. I surreptitiously took this picture:
Driving back I took a picture of the amazing trees around here. They send down vines which,
once they hit the ground, sink roots and grow into new trunks, supporting the original tree's
limbs but also sort of seeming to strangle its parent.
One of our neighbors came by during dinner, and told us that a couple of boys on bikes, who live in the projects nearby, had stopped and checked out our bicycles. Mark said, "oh, well they're locked" and the neighbor said, "well, that might not stop them; just wanted you to know" so we started bringing them inside at night. Another time Katie and I walked to the playground here and I collected all the condom wrappers and other trash from the sandbox while she played. We met a carny there, who was watching his neice and nephew play. The neice, Brianna, was 4 but so tiny she was slight next to her 2-year-old brother Alan. She was very nice, with the highest voice I've ever heard, and Katie warmed up a little to them. The carny was only 21 years old but looked older (missing a tooth or two), and told me about how he and his father (who lives at that park too, when they're not travelling together with the carnival) had their scooters stolen but got them back because they found the guys driving them nearby, and when the carneys pulled their trucks in front of them and then got out wearing microphone-type cell phones on their collars, they looked like undercover cops and the kids gave up yelling, "take them, take them" and ran away.
Yesterday was our last real day here, and we drove down (with the bikes on top of the car, not leaving them alone here anymore) to Key Largo to go on a glass-bottom boat trip and see the coral reef (it's the third largest reef in the world, they say. Of course, they also called Bahia Honda beach the second prettiest beach in the world, and if that's true I'd hate to see the third prettiest).
Before the tour, Katie splashed around along a coral spit.
Katie took the following picture, of our boat:
The water was exceptionally clear and calm, they said, and truly we didn't have a single swell
the whole trip out or back (6 miles each way). We got to see a nurse shark, a loggerhead?
turtle (the kind they almost killed off to make tortoise shell trinkets), and some folks saw a
ray, and Mark saw some dolphin. Also, Katie got to see lots of "Dori" fish (from Nemo). I
really enjoyed it, but snorkeling would have been even better (except there were a lot of
baracuda).
Katie was looking at me through the window of the glass bottom boat, through which I took the
snaps of her and Mark on the deck. It's one of my favorites of her.
Today we are driving to Ft. Lauderdale for one night, and then we're back to state parks for a week or two, till we leave Florida on February 11.