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Sunday, December 23, 2001 - A Thousand Miles in Florida
65 miles. Ommokolee, FL to east of Everglades City, FL
That is correct. When I am done I will have pedaled
over a thousand miles thru the Sunshine State. It is a great way to become
familiar with an area. On a bike you must take longer to reach your destination
and tend to end up in more obscure places than you might when traveling via
automobile. Today was a run down Fl-29 to U.S. 41 which runs east thru the
Everglades.
The riding from now on will be perfectly flat with the
only climbing created by man. This makes it easy to keep your eye on that white
line and just go. To the east was the Big Cypress Swamp National Preserve. This
and the Everglades Nat. Park will eventually become The Hadrian's Wall
delineating the line where man and his "development" stop.
The best view was from the top of the Overpass of I-75.
There are lots of wading birds, egrets, cormorants, storks plus a remarkable
number of vultures, taking the winter off in southern Florida. There were a
number of groups of 10 and more relaxing on the roadside. Ignoring cars they
felt it necessary to take flight as I cycled past.
Here I also came across a reason for not moving to
Florida. It is difficult to get potable water out of the ground with the water
table so close to the surface. I had to become very cautious where I refilled my
water bottles, and this keeping full bottles was essential with the temperature
hovering at about 80*. Here you also find the last bastion of the Florida
Panther. There are about 30 of them hanging on in the Preserve. There are
several areas where the roadway is fenced of for miles on both sides to funnel
these reclusive cats to what can only be described as panther underpasses of
Fl-29.
I rode about 23 miles down U.S. 41 and camped at the
closed Midway Campground. It was easy to get around the locked gate and camp way
in the back out of sight of passing traffic. This will position me well for
tomorrow's long ride which will allow me to reach Little Torch Key on Christmas
Day instead of the 26th.
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