Key West or Bust, Day 5

Gator Bait

Thursday May 15, 2008

By 8:00 AM we are making our good-byes to our friend Mary. She’s departing for an out-of-country trip. We’re southbound along Florida's Gulf Coast, Key West or Bust.

For a while, it seems like it might be bust, unless I can recover my navigating skills without the GPS. For an unknown reason, the map screen keeps locking up. The GPS seems functional in all aspects, seems to navigate just fine, but just can’t draw the screen. I’m amused at how helpless I feel without the familiar magenta route line or, even if not navigating a route, the street names displayed crisply on the map. Several time I get off route and Jill announces that I’m off route and offers to recalculate, which she does, but just can’t redraw the screen.

This problem could arise because of a corrupted map segment/file or it could be a GPS problem. I cycle it off/on many times, and eventually it gets better. It finally draws the screen properly and displays the route appropriately; I don’t dare touch the screen for fear that it will once again go into spasm. Tonight I will copy all the routes, tracks, and waypoints to my laptop and prepare to do a hard reset if necessary.

This morning, for no particular reason, we are a quiet couple. Yesterday we were very chatty, talking for hours in our headsets. About why the north Florida soil is black whereas it is sandy in South Carolina. About Kitty’s colleagues at work. About how I love my work. About speedos and Jabba the Hut. About our friends and loved ones at home and how much we appreciate all the people in our lives even while we’re running away for a brief time. About Danica and her antics.

But today, not so chatty. We roll without much talk southward along the Tamiami Trail, US 41, a hundred miles of sun-baked shopping centers, housing developments, and assisted living complexes in pastel shades of coral, peach, and sand. Cross streets and red lights abound between Sarasota and Naples. I had purposed to take the Tamiami Trail just for the sake of having ridden its length from Sarasota southward, but a dozen times I almost bail out and take the Interstate. Great place to visit, not so great for a motorcycle ride, although Kitty says she now has a great many new landscaping ideas!

From the Gulf coast, to get to the Keys you pretty much have to cross to the other side of the state by traveling eastward on Alligator Alley (I-75) or the Tamiami Trail through the Great Cypress National Preserve and the Everglades. As you might expect, I have chosen the two-lane route. So after passing through Naples we turn east and strike a mostly straight course for the 90-mile dash along the Miami Canal through the Preserve and the northern edge of the Everglades.

A series of my favorite road signs occurs in the Preserve: “Panther Crossing 5 Miles”, repeated every mile for five miles using the appropriate mileage indicator. I have traveled all over the United States and Canada and have never seen another Panther Crossing sign, and it just makes me smile. There remain only 30 of the endangered Florida panthers, and we learn at the visitor center that being hit by cars is the chief cause of fatality. Thus the 50-mph speed limit (45 at night) on a straight and deserted road that begs for 70 mph travel. Nevertheless, I hold the speed limit like a good citizen. Fortunately, I do not hit and kill a panther. Unfortunately, neither do we see one.

At the visitor center we get a few mementos and ask about where we might see alligators without taking the Wing and trailer on graveled or dusty roads. “Just walk outside to the boardwalk and I’d bet money you’ll see some. It’s mating season and they’re pretty frisky,” says the ranger.

So we walk outside and sure enough, we see upwards of eight gators, two of them quite large. They don’t seem very frisky. Actually, mostly they don’t move, simply immersing their scaly bodies in the murky water while resting their heads on a rock or the bank of the canal, eyes and nostrils just above water. One seems confused about what an alligator should do, though, as his tail is out of the water and his head is immersed. The most frisky one is swimming lazily up the canal, tail describing a slow series of graceful sinuous curves while his head remains motionless as the water gently ripples out behind him in a v-shaped wedge. The other gators pay no attention.

Minutes after leaving the visitor center and resuming our eastward trek, we both notice the acrid smell of smoke in the air. This is the first sign we’ve seen of the fearsome Florida fires. Days ago, I saw on the CNN website that the area around Naples was declared unhealthy due to wind-blown smoke from the Okeechobee fires, but it was clear today as we passed through. Now, though, the smoke becomes thicker and a ghostly pale fog envelopes the road surface and the trees in the distance. It’s eerie and makes me feel vaguely claustrophobic. It’s all-encompassing in an unsettling sort of way and there seems to be no way out. In about 20 miles the smoke lessens and in 30 miles, by the time we’re 28 miles west of Miami and turn southward onto Rt. 997, the smoke is gone.

Travel for us is so very upside down compared to what I imagine would be the case for normal travelers. When we tour on the Wing, our main purpose is to ride. We don’t do much. Our travel philosophy is really pretty basic: If you see a tour bus parked somewhere, don’t go there. And be afraid — be very afraid! — if ever you might see three of said buses at any one place. I ask Kitty several times today if she wants to do any of those Everglades things that normal people do, but she’s just not that interested and neither am I. I’d love to learn more about the environment, but those tour buses are just too daunting. I can’t make myself do it!

We roll southward on Rt. 997 through the heartland of Florida’s plant nursery. Kitty loves it, as I knew she would. There are miles of nurseries filled with exotically graceful palm trees of various kinds, whole sections filled with red bougainvillea, fields of beans and potatoes, nurseries with all types of concrete creations, potted flowering plants in profusion. It’s a veritable feast for a plant-lover. I always think that a palm tree with it's perfectly graceful fronds and the symmetrical yet asymptotic curve of its branches, is just about one of the most perfectly appealing plants God ever created!

By the time we reach Homestead and find a Comfort Inn for the night, the GPS seems to be working flawlessly again. I suspect a corrupted map segment as the cause of this morning’s problems, but still I download all the GPS information to the laptop in case I need to do a hard reset. For now, it’s all good.

Tonight is laundry night. See you tomorrow!