25.7 mi / 13.8 mph / 180 ft. climbing
Home: John Pennekamp State Park

We’d been running the air conditioning all day and night of our three night motel stay (and our four nights near Miami), and our emergence back onto the road proved why that had been necessary. The fresh northeast winds that made us skip a day trip to the Everglades a couple days ago were still in place, making today’s southward ride easy. Except that moving at the speed of the wind negated its cooling effects.

The cyclist who gave us the excellent advice to take the train into Miami didn’t score nearly as well with his advice to take Card Sound Road to Key Largo. The heatmaps show that plenty of cyclists do select the shoulderless but much-less-traveled easterly option, but the existence of a good shoulder for the entire length of the 20-mile “bridge” to the Keys on US-1 made it the obvious choice for us (in his defense, that continuous shoulder might be relatively new).

As the satellite view shows, development died immediately, leaving just the road and a continuous chain link fence separating us from the flooded grasslands of the Everglades. I read someone say the fence is to keep wildlife off the road? If so, our well-calibrated roadkill detectors deemed it relatively-effective.

That doesn’t mean the shoulder was empty, however. It was littered with an above-average amount of debris, most unknowingly ejected by vehicles, but some by the humans inside them. So it wasn’t shocking that immediately after riding through one particularly ugly debris field, Rett’s rear tire went flat so quickly that we were barely able to limp the 100 yards ahead to a widening of the shoulder in order to change it. The irony then was that I immediately found a tiny wire from an exploded truck tire (our most-common culprit) sticking out from the bike tire, and not one of the large, sharp pieces of metal or glass we’d just rolled over. But I double-checked anyway by inflating the tube, and luckily discovered that the tire wire was a red herring, and it was in fact a piece of glass that had rammed itself between the tire and tube.

It was hot as hell replacing it on the edge of the shadeless highway with traffic roaring by, but Rett took it in stride, especially impressive because her cold symptoms were peaking.

15 miles into our ride across the “bridge”, the actual, unquoted bridge climbed us up over our final crossing of the Intracoastal Waterway (first crossed in New Jersey more than two months ago). That rise, combined with a slight turn to the southeast that converted our mostly-tailwind into a straight crosswind forced us off the bikes and walking as the buffeting made it too hard to maintain control without risking being blown into either the wall or a passing truck. We also removed the brim from Rett’s helmet to keep it from yanking her head off.

Touching down in Key Largo didn’t make anything cooler, but at least the return to civilization meant that we could take advantage of the air-conditioning inside Winn-Dixie, and then the shade of its brick walls under which we ate our lunch. It was actually quite pleasant there with the breeze still able to make it through the attractive thicket of dense trees.

Pennekamp State Park is famous for the Coral Reef in its full name, but the winds and high seas meant that our hopes of making a snorkeling excursion were dashed. The reef must be the main draw to the always-booked campground, since the sites themselves are nothing anyone would go out of their way for (though as always, the Florida State Park system does well with the hand they dealt themselves: clean showers, dish washing station, and water and electric at our site). So at least our shirtless tent-camping Civic-driving neighbor was a fun guy whose New Yorker tough-guy attitude toward his two dogs did a poor job of concealing his love for them (our other neighbor was the imposing wall of a giant RV).

At some point our neighbor (newly arrived today to Florida from North Carolina) said something about “these damn bugs, something’s biting me but I can’t even see ’em!” “Oh yeah, they suck, and that’s what they’re called too, no-see-ums!” I’m not sure he believed us! But he was right, the no-see-ums were annoying, though they at least seemed to follow the “rules” and get less-active after dusk. But with the heat, our normal camp solution (cover up with long pants and our hoodies) wasn’t a great solution, and neither was the second option (getting in the tent), because intermittent sprinkles meant we needed to have the rainfly on, making it too hot even when stripped down. I made it work with some of our Picaridin repellent (which was quite effective), but Rett is reluctant to use it, so combined with her cold, our first night in the Keys is hardly shaping up to be paradise.