Day 10 (24 May). Northern Everglades

From: Key West, FL

To: Lake Placid, FL

Miles today: 317

Total miles: 2237

A travel day today, meaning one of 300 miles or more. I left Key West at 8 am, but it still took me about three hours to reach the mainland.  It’s just a slow drive. From there I retraced my steps up 997, skirting the Miami region, and then headed west on US 41 across the Everglades. There are essentially no towns (or gas stations) along this route, but several places where you can get air boat rides and the like. I stopped at one of four official National Park facilities, this one in the Shark River Valley, and took their two-hour tram tour out to an observation tower and back.

I found that I was quite ignorant of the Everglades ecosystem, at least in this region.  First, there are only a few inches of muddy soil covering a vast extent of limestone.  No peat bogs here, although other parts of the Everglades have some.  In many places the limestone sticks up through the ground.  Second, this region has two very distinct modes, corresponding to the dry season and the rainy season.  In the dry season, which we are currently at the very end of, this entire area is “sawgrass prairie” with scattered small outcroppings of different ecosystems. If the local elevation rises by a foot, you get dry areas, with trees. If it drops a foot, you get a water hole, with different vegetation and occasionally an alligator.  Here ares some pix; the second is a picture from the Shark Valley observation tower, inside one of these islands, looking out at the sawgrass prairie and more islands. 

Sawgrass Prairie with "Islands"  - End of the Dry Season.

View of the Sawgrass Prairie from inside one of the larger islands.

In the wet season, which it should become almost any day, this entire area will be covered with water a few feet deep, with the islands and tops of the sawgrass poking out.  On the Florida panhandle, there is a north-south ridge west of Miami that peaks at 30 to 40 feet above sea level.  On the Tampa (west) side, there is a similar ridge about 20 feet high. In between is the “shark river valley,” no more than 8 feet above sea level. In the rainy season, the entire valley becomes a giant river, 50 miles wide and 2-3 feet deep, flowing at a incredibly slow rate of about 100 feet per day toward the Gulf of Mexico.  

The park personnel discuss the problems associated with that dike I saw around Lake Okeechobee a lot.  That lake used to be part of the ecosystem and would flood every year at this time; the dike, built in the early 1930’s, changed that, as did the numerous water channels cut through the northern Everglades to provide water for Miami. To their credit, the state of Florida and the US are apparently making a significant long-term effort to restore some of the earlier balance. 

Graphic from the Shark Valley Observation Tower

After leaving the park, I continued west on US 41, then turned north on FL 29.  This was a beautifully empty 2-lane road that I blazed by various thunderstorms on (without getting wet). This road ends at US 27, 4-lane divided highway but also mostly empty.  The landscape here is one of relatively short trees and pasture land.  It is very green.