Journey's end?

On Thursday morning we headed out after a couple of terrific days with my cousin. Of course first we had to debate our route for the day. We had reservations at a park in Homestead and there were two choices. We could take I-75 across the Everglades on what is known as Alligator Alley crossing Florida from Naples across to Weston and then down through Miami OR we could head down past Naples on Rte 41 and cross the Everglades on the Tamiami Trail. As the driver, Geoff is the boss of such choices and he liked the second one, across on the Tamiami Trail. He liked giving Miami a miss!

We put the route into the GPS, a tablet type choice from Rand McNally, packed up and unhooked the utilities and stopped at the park dump station to empty the tank and toss our trash and recyclables into the appropriate dumpsters. The Tamiami Trail runs from Tampa, north of Sarasota, on down across the Everglades to southwest Miami. Much of the route is flat boring swampy grassland with a canal dug along the road for the eastern stretch.

Partway across is the small town of Everglades City, south of the trail, and further east from there is a strange little restaurant, Joanie's Blue Crab Cafe. This cafe is in the middle of nowhere pretty much, being about 50 miles from Naples to the west and Miami to the east. It is not air conditioned except by the breezes blowing through the windows and appears to have much shorter hours/days during the hot summer. The menu is eclectic featuring gator, shrimp, crab and other seafoods including frog legs and oysters. It certainly made a marvelous lunch stop crossing from west to east in the Everglades. The building was originally a cattle barn and then a bulk oil business until it became a restaurant in 1987 and even has a historical marker out front.

We finally dragged ourselves away from Joanie's and continued east towards Homestead. I tried to get a few photos on the way of the many birds, mostly gannets and various herons and egrets ... birds on the wires, birds in the bushes, birds in the water or along the edges, and sun worshipping birds ... but they all came out fuzzy as trying to get pictures while moving just doesn't work well. Not even the 'panther crossing' signs came out in any way but fuzzy!

We finally got to our destination at the Boardwalk RV park where we had reservations for the next three nights. We got settled in to our site and then things went downhill. The toilet had stayed plugged up even though we had emptied it at the dump at the state park ... PoGoGo was unloaded to use to head for the park bathrooms (which were a ways away from our site) and all it would do is beep at us and refuse to move ... and then we tried to get a rental car to go to the Everglades the next day and to the Keys the day after and there were NONE available, we had failed to take into account that it was the weekend before Thanksgiving.

At this point the adventures got to be too much and my sweet polite Geoff said, "F**k It!! Let's go home!" so we did. So we called the park office and told them we had a family emergency and had to leave and then we faced Miami traffic with 26 miles between us and the beginning of I-95 which is still south of Miami proper! At least we got to see downtown Miami up close and personal. The first rest area on I-95 is up around mile marker 105 where we finally pulled in and parked to get some rest. Some time after 5 AM we headed north to an exit with a Flying J travel center and a Dennys for breakfast.

We were home by noon, ready to get back off the road but maybe not so ready to face all the work still to do to get our home back in order.

As a reminder, at right is a photo of one of the guys working on cutting the floor pieces back in early November. That work had been finished but we still had sooo much to get back into the house and put away.