Heading Home

Tuesday, November 5, 1996

Once again, the reporters from the Citizen managed to stand me up. They never showed up for an interview they scheduled for 9:00 AM. What a lousy newspaper.

I took some pictures from the roof of the La Concha hotel--the highest point in town.

Duval Street

looking north

Looking south

There were a couple of huge cruise ships in port.

I took a walk along Duval Street in the daylight.

Then I headed toward the airport on my bike. I made an obligatory stop at the beach so I could say I'd swum in the Gulf of Mexico at Key West and I noticed a young lady sunning topless.

I rode my bike to the Key West Airport for a bus ride back to Key Largo and my rental car. The Key Largo Visitor Information Center was nice enough to let me park my car there for the period I was gone to Key West.

Driving the rental car from Key Largo to St. Petersburg, I went over the US-1 segment between Key Largo and Homestead that I'd not ridden. The road was real busy and there were those highway reflectors on the shoulder every few feet, to keep cars (and bicycles) from driving there. At Homestead, the pavement on the shoulder vanished completely and the driving conditions (due to road construction) were real poor.

From Homestead, I headed up to the US-27 segment near Hialeah that I was most worried about. I didn't see street gangs or any justification for urban fear/paranoia. (I'm not willing to discount the advice I got about being in danger in Dade County due to my panniers, but I couldn't have made it anyway without my tent and sleeping bag.) Instead of some urban scene, I saw absolutely nothing but the Everglades and gravel pits. Where US-27 cut east from Dade County 997, I expected to find some sort of accommodations, but there was absolutely nothing in sight.

Intersection of US-27 and Dade County 997

The Everglades along US-27.

Between South Bay and 997 there was only one truck stop--no motel. If I had still carried my tent and sleeping bag, I think I could have survived this segment by sleeping at a gravel pit, but there is no way I could have made it all the way from Clewiston to Homestead in one day in order to reach the nearest motel. I was wiser than I realized to have skipped this segment.

I drove across Alligator Alley (the route used to get to US-27 from the west coast of Florida) on my way up to visit my mother and fly home from St. Petersburg. At a "recreation stop", I decided to see whether there were indeed any alligators about. There was one within just a few feet of me, lurking partially submerged.

0 Miles of bicycling today.

Before you leave, please take a look at my Final Equipment Review, the newly modified Packing List pages, and, my Epilogue where I enlist your participation in my lobbying campaign to make the nation's highways more bicycle friendly. Please stay tuned for information on obtaining a CD-ROM update of this website and my book about this adventure. As you probably noticed, I plan also to utilize this website to post reports of upcoming adventures; hence the fork in the road between 1996 and 1997. Thanks for tuning me in. May you always have

Florida

The End

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© Ed Noonan 1996, 1997