Key West or Bust, Day 9

Where There’s Smoke… Don’t
Monday May 19, 2008

When Kitty and I were discussing this trip and talked about riding south along the Gulf coast and then returning through central Florida, she said “Orlando is in central Florida, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, that’s about as central as it gets,” I responded.

“Could we go to Disney World?” she asked with impish grin.

“Yes we could,” I answered.

And so I booked the tickets and the hotel. Two nights in the hotel, one day at the park. So once again we have a destination. I have double- and triple-checked over the past week to make sure we are on schedule and that I haven’t somehow booked the rooms a day early or late! That’s one of my worst fears when we have “hard points” in a trip: That I’ll get out of synch by a day and suddenly we’ll find ourselves wandering around with plans we can’t fulfill and spent money we can't use!

It’s a short ride to the Disney Pop Century Resort Hotel where I’ve made reservations, about 150 miles from Clewiston. We laze around, pick up a few groceries at grocery store, and roll out around 9:30 AM. This morning, a gray pall of smoke hangs like a curtain to the north, but probably east of where we might be traveling. The desk clerk tells us that the route we’ll be taking was pretty smoky this morning but should be cleared by now with the winds from the west.

The first thing I want to do is backtrack to a waypoint I marked yesterday as we rode by, an “Okeechobee Scenic Loop” turnoff. The GPS routes us to the little park and we decide to start by walking up onto the levee, along the south shore of Lake Okeechobee. We immediately see smoking remains of the burning lakebed, and large plumes of dirty white smoke arising across the lake from the north shore. I’m expecting to see a very large body of water, but with the water level where it is now, we see a canal and mostly a dry and smoldering lakebed, with the water a shimmering mirage in the distance.

I’d like to ride the scenic road atop the levee, but Kitty wisely talks me out of this. “Knowing that there are fires burning, firefighters and equipment in use, do you really think we have any business taking our Gold Wing and a trailer on this narrow road into the fire area?”

I know she’s right, and so we abandon our scenic ride for the day and simply ride northward on US 27 to Orlando. It's our hottest morning to date, with the temperature at 89F at 10:00 AM. As we roll northward against a fierce quartering wind from the northwest, holding the posted speed limit of 65 mph, the sugar cane eventually gives way to miles of orange groves, which appear (for this growing season) to be nearly ready for harvest. Some orchards have large trucks already loaded with orange-filled crates. According to the GPS, our elevation has changed from at or slightly below sea level in the Everglades to around 150 feet above sea level, a tiny change but enough to make a dramatic difference in the topography. Judging by the multiple advertising signs we see using the word “Highlands”, it seems this area is thought of as the highlands.

Orange groves give way to beef farms. If I asked any 10 of you which state is the largest producer of beef in the United States, I’d get answers like, what… Texas, certainly. Oklahoma, maybe? Or the more adventurous might volunteer Colorado, or even Wyoming? Nebraska? You would all be wrong. Along with sugar cane, citrus fruits, and several other crops, Florida is also our nation’s number one beef producer!

Along the way, we can see the smoke plumes of the wildfires off to the right, north and east. Occasionally we get a whiff of smoke and once or twice we think there’s a bit of haze hovering over the road surface, but since the wind is carrying the smoke away from us we have no problems.

About 60 miles out of Orlando we begin seeing the first cloud cover since the first two days of the trip, and about 40 miles out, as I look at our GPS waypoint and compare it to the darkest heart of the clouds, I realize we’ll be in the middle of the downpour. We pull over and do the Dance of the Rainsuit amid large drops that are already splattering down. The temperature has dropped 14 degrees to about 72F. But by the time we’re back on the road, the heaviest rain has passed and we are dealt only a glancing blow. After 20 minutes of riding in what’s now bright sunshine, it’s really hot under the rainsuits and so we do the Undance of the Rainsuit. We repeat the dance once more just about 10 miles from our destination when we ride through another downpour. We get to the hotel very early, about 1:30 PM.

Our check-in hostess at the Pop Century Hotel, Sarah of Augusta, Georgia, tells us that the hotel has 2,880 rooms. All I can think is “That’s a lot of laundry!”

"Here's your parking pass," she says. I explain that we're on a motorcycle that will be completely covered and ask her for suggestions. She has none. I solve the problem by taking one of the complimentary luggage tags provided in the purchase package, cutting and folding the parking pass paper until it fits the tag, and attaching it to the tongue of the trailer. Not on the dashboard as requested, but the best I can do.

The hotel is whimsically themed for a century of popular items. It features building-sized icons of things typical during the various decades of the past century, including giant Rubik’s cubes, four-story tall 8-track tapes, a 40-foot high Big Wheel that lists the “Recommended Child Weight” as 877 pounds.

So we find our room in the 70’s building, clean and cover the bike and trailer now that it’s once again sunny, hang out by the pool for an hour and a half while doing our laundry, eat dinner from the food court, and go for a walk along the lake where a mama duck and her two very tiny ducklings walk up to within a foot of us and duck-talk to each other before wandering back down to the water.

Kitty is reading all the materials on what we might do tomorrow. Which is a good thing, because while I more or less got us here and penciled in a few recommendations from friends, I confess I haven’t spent a lot of time figuring out what to do with yet another destination.