Many things change as soon as you cross the state line into Florida. I am at a campground a little southwest of the Okefenokee Swamp, on a freshwater lake called Ocean Pond. The sand is the small-grained whitish sand I associate with the Florida Gulf, not the big grained yellow-ish sand of Atlantic beaches. There are at least four campsites that appear to be occupied by lifers; this the place they are going to wait out the recession … you need three campground hosts for a 40 site place? And indeed this would be a pretty sweet place to set up for a while if you like balmy weather and clean quiet water, and who doesn’t? It is very rural right around here, but 10 miles away is the strip mall culture that I think of as quintessentially Florida – endless 4-lane highways with interminable traffic lights, too much traffic and ill-behaved drivers who combine aggression with inattention and incompetence. I don’t like driving here, can you tell?
Friday/Saturday/Sunday
I have entered the timeless world of my sister’s gay and lesbian campground. Very, very pleasant place to hang out, full of fabulous people! There’s a pool, with a poolside bar called Splash!, which serves a mean breakfast and has wifi – woo hoo for wifi. There’s a community center, sort of glorified rec hall with an outdoor stage in back where everything else happens. This particular day and night was a benefit for a local animal shelter, singing and dancing and a sax player from Tampa, and an evening auction. I stayed around Sunday to watch the 49ers play the local heroes, the Bucs. Niners bit it big time again. Why do I even care?
Monday
I was going 5 mph on my bicycle and almost ran over an armadillo! If I had been going 10 mph it never woulda happened, Mr Armo would’ve remained in freeze-frame mode and I would’ve “zoomed” on by. But, as it happened I hit a patch of deeper sand right in front of this guy, so I was braking, lurching around and wobbling in an alarming fashion and he decided to punt the freeze-frame act and get the hell outta there. He missed my tire by three inches, and that only because I managed to zig instead of zagging right over him! I’m getting better at controlling this cute little bike, but it is not a great off-road bike, and any sudden change in the depth of the sand will make it seize up and put me down right down on my face.
I am in Highland Hammocks State Park in the middle of Florida. This part of the state is very flat and low-lying, so “highland” is a relative term, like 2-3 feet! I left Milly’s this late morning after another fortifying breakfast at Splash!, for more of that slow and nerve-wracking torture they call driving around here. It’s not just the old folks, it’s the country folk who don’t quite realize they left the gravel road for the 4-lane, it’s the Hispanic mom whose speed dropped off 25 mph right in front of me because she gets a call on her cell phone, and of course, the hormone-soaked teens who cut you off and don’t even know they did it. Ok, I should let it go … even more reason to be happy to be out of the rat race and in my happy campground at Highland Hammocks for the rest of the afternoon!
HHSP has lots of bike trails, and I am here with plenty of time to enjoy them, so after a little chillin and bloggin and data entry in the various spreadsheets with which I track myself, I bust out the bike and take off. I got quite a workout, because the trail was much longer than it looked to be on the map, and it was poorly marked, so I came out on some country road with no idea where I was. So I ended up pedalling around on my 16″ wheels for pretty much two solid hours, till well after dark and I had fun and was righteously sore the next day. The cypress swamp makes all kinds of strange noises in the evening.
Oh and there was another armadillo snuffling around in the dirt about 10 feet from my van that night. They seem to be similar to possums in their slow-wittedness.
Tuesday
The park has a restaurant, so I biked over in the morning and had a pork bbq sando and coffee, the closest thing to breakfast that they had. This place is another CCC wonder, in fact there is a little CCC museum across the way. I daresay that the only reason there is a restaurant there is that they’ve had this extremely well-built building hanging around for eighty years and they needed to do something with it. The little museum had a register, where I signed with the comment “government works!” I doubt very many people will see it or get the point I was trying to make, namely that the government initiative which the museum and indeed the whole park celebrates would be demonized as Kenyan socialism today by most of the good folks enjoying the facilities.
Then a pretty long driving afternoon, because Florida is quite long! Traffic was much sparser and thus much better down here. I drove along Lake Ochecobee for 15 miles and never once saw the lake! It is ringed by a huge (30-40′) tall levee, so I can’t even say for sure there is a lake, all I saw was a 15 mile long mount of dirt. Then was 40 miles of sugarcane fields and sugarcane trucks, then was a gigantic Indian casino, then … the Everglades!
There is nothing else remotely like the Everglades anywhere else in the US, a seemingly endless subtropical swamp. The way most people see it is zooming down the Tamiami Trail (US 47) a 60 mile straight shot through the middle. So you’re seeing tons of egrets and herons, the occasional alligator or turtle or other bird, but you’re seeing them for about 1.5 seconds as you rocket past. I stopped at a visitors center where I could’ve have walked up and touched a gator if I was foolish enough to do so – I did stand 5 feet away and stare at it for a long time. I also bought my Senior Pass for National Parks and Forests, about which I am really stoked!
I camped at a little lake in Big Cypress National Preserve, which is the next few hundred square miles north and west of the Everglades. Very pretty, very hot, and very full of little biting critters which I think were chiggers! Have you western kids even heard of chiggers? Pretty funny name, huh? They are little mites that live in the grass and love to nestle between your clothes and your skin and burrow in and make you itch like crazy for 2-3 days.
Wednesday
Today is gettin’ back to Milly’s for the big meal tomorrow. In the morning I decided I need a little more adventure in my life so I took the 26 mile loop trail through the Everglades. I would say in retrospect that was a dumb thing to do. It was a gravel road for about 20 miles, and is was a really shitty, giant pot-holed road for all but about 3 of those miles. So I wasn’t seeing much scenery because I had to concentrate completely on which set of potholes would make my van lurch less sickeningly. So I guess it was a noble effort to see the real Everglades, but next time I think I’ll take a tram ride.
I took I-75 back, which was a way better way to actually get somewhere than the surface roads I generally prefer. Traffic wasn’t bad all day, until … about 4:30 the freeway stopped dead. We crossed I-4, and it too was stopped dead. I guess everybody in Florida got home from work, packed the suv and headed off to Grandma’s at exactly the same time.
Thursday/Friday/Saturday
Turkey day at the Sawmill was quite nice. They supply the turkey and ham, and everybody brings dishes. Probably over 100 people, ad a great variety of stuffings and veggies and desserts, then a little nude swimming with the boys!
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