Everglades & The Keys
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Watery tropical wilderness is everywhere in this region. The huge flowing waterway that is most of central Florida starting from the center of the state ends in Everglades National Park, the third largest in the US.
This is Wildlife Central with all sorts of resident and migratory birdlife and those big gators weightlessly gliding along through the thousands of miles of mangrove waterways. Get to Flamingo and you’ll be looking out at the edge of Florida Bay, probably the least traveled wilderness in the US, with thousands of islands. A sunrise on a remote spec of sand out in that bay will put anyone’s life right back in perspective.
South from here you head to the Keys, but first you’ve gotta see the Fruit and Spice Park, a 32 acre botanical garden and research facility. Here’s why: they have 500 varieties of fruit, nuts, sapodilla, longan, mamey sapote, black sapote (“chocolate pudding fruit”), miracle fruit, jaboticaba, cecropia (“snake fingers”), coffee beans and wax jambu. Who knew? You’re free to sample that wax jambu, incidentally. Elsewhere, quaint tea rooms, antique shops, exotic birds, and potters occupy the restored original cottages of Flagler’s multi-ethnic railroad builders of 1903.
Pack some of Knaus Berry Farm’s fruits and baked goods from this famous fruit stand, or try their fresh and creamy strawberry and mango shakes. Long lines form out front from sunup to closing time when the fresh sticky cinnamon buns come out of the oven.
Then comes the famous Florida Keys. Where else in the world can you find 45 islands (ten thousand in all, but they aren’t all habitable) connected by one forever long road (120 miles) over pale blue tropical waters, ending in Key West, arguably the most unusual town in the world, with a devil may care attitude and locals whose life mission is to buck the trend.
About 25 thousand years ago, water receded, leaving living coral exposed as low isles, or “cayos”. One not to miss on the way down the upper keys is John Pennekamp State Park, where you can snorkel or dive into a tropical fish heaven in this protected 78 sq.mile section of coral reef. Just past the Seven Mile Bridge is the popular Bahia Honda State Park. Get out and walk the old Bahia Honda Rail Bridge for a spectacular sight of the other isles. On Big Pine and No Name you can see baby Bambies, an endangered species of small Key deer that got stranded eons ago and shrank to the size of a dog. For great grove reef dives, it’s Looe Key. For a big overview to make sense of all this beauty head to the Florida Keys Eco-Discovery Center. It’s free! which is a word you don’t see often enough.
Key West, like no other place, typifies the dream of getting set adrift, in a no-rules apply to me kind of way. Not so unusual when you consider it was founded by pirates in the early 1500′s.
You can visit Hemingway’s house to see his 6 toed cats in the garden, Robert Frost’s house for his winter visits, and for every literary person featured around town there will be dozens of outrageous nuts in all manner of dress and undress. Anything goes; life is a party. Tolerance and mutual respect go along with this, so you’re safe to play there, too. Old Town is where you’ll see eateries, inns, old timey Colonial architecture, the north end full of t shirt shops and bars, and the south end has a few well and not so well hidden sandy beaches. Key West and the Keys in general are a flavor of Florida you won’t soon forget. It is as tropical and bizarre as the US gets, and the Conch Republic will always be a special type of getaway/hideaway.
Watercolor by Peter Bailey