Marathon, FL to Key West, FL

 57 miles today to complete our journey.

For some reason unknown to me, we rode more together as a group today than pretty much any other day of the trip.  We mostly all left the hotel around the same time & a good sized group went at the same pace for quite a while.  One of the more interesting road situations was on our schedule.  There is a 7 mile long bridge that kind of becomes the entrance to Key West.  It is mostly flat, but does have a hump part way through to create a channel for big boats.  This is easily the longest bridge I have ever crossed on my bike.  What makes it more interesting is the wind conditions that tend to want to destabilize the bike.  I never felt unsafe, but I could sure feel the wind pushing me back and forth.  As we came off the bridge, our support driver Carol got a picture of 6 of us together.  I am second last.

As I mentioned before, roosters seem to be a big deal around Key West.  I probably heard 10 of them announcing their presence, only actually saw 4, and managed to get a picture of just this one.

The thing that most surprised me today was how much undeveloped land there is in this area.  For everything I’ve heard about Key West, I was expecting more of an urban area.  The city itself is developed and densely populated, but there aren’t any suburbs.  There are a lot of bridges.  In addition to the 7 mile bridge, there are probably 50 other much shorter that we crossed today.

Another interesting factoid about the Keys is how stable the daily temperatures are.  Today the forecast was a low of 79 and a high of 81.  On the subject of weather, we managed to do this 3 week journey without ever really riding in the rain.  We did delay our start one day by a couple of hours to miss a storm & we did have a few sprinkles here or there, but we never really got wet.  Amazing!  We have heard that some of the towns we went through have now been hit by heavy rain storms.  We were just enough ahead of that to miss them.

There are a couple of iconic landmarks that are picture opportunities down here.  One is the southernmost point in the continental USA.  When we arrived there, we found a line about 30 minutes long waiting to get their picture taken.  Here I am waiting.

And here is most of our group with a picture at the landmark.

The other place to get a picture is at mile 0 on Hy 1.  We have been watching the mile markers going down every day & here is proof that we reached the very beginning of Hy 1.

Another tradition is a full group photo at dinner.  This picture is actually from last night, but does include most everyone in our group.  It was a great group to journey with.  I made a bunch of new friends & heard people’s stories from all around the US & even some Canadians.

This pretty much completes my version of this New Orleans to Key West bicycle adventure.  Thanks for following along.  I hope you enjoyed.

Tomorrow we have an off day to do a little sightseeing & a lot of rearranging the van in preparation for our return drive home beginning early Tuesday morning.  Depending on how we feel, we are expecting either 2 or 3 days travel to get back to Wisconsin

Key Largo, FL to Marathon, FL

 46 miles today in the Florida Keys

I was back on the bike today & it felt so good. No flat tires or broken spokes, just a day of sightseeing , which is so much better at under 15 mph than in a car, train or airplane.  We started out by arriving 10 minutes early at:

The sign is oversized based on the size of the factory, but we waited the 10 minutes and I had:

Tasted quite good, but at $10 it seemed overpriced.  Most of the rest of the ride today was a combination of trails, bridges & riding on the shoulder of the road.  One of the bridges had to be 3 miles long, but there weren’t any large hills associated with them like in Louisiana & Alabama.

Key Largo is pretty wide, so we rode quite a few miles, but never saw water.  As we got further along & especially on bridges - it was ocean on the left and gulf on the right.  It is pretty common to see signs that say “No fishing on bridge” & there was plenty of that restriction here.  Surprisingly there were also a couple of places where a second pedestrian/bike bridge was built that allows fishing.

This is what it looked like as we approached, but the picture doesn’t do it justice.  There were literally hundreds of fishing poles sitting on the ground with each person apparently responsible for 3 or 4 at a time.  I don’t know what happens if you hook a fish & if no one is holding the rod, why the fish can’t just pull the whole apparatus over the concrete wall.  A bigger problem we had on the bikes was weaving our way through a couple hundred yards of fishing poles and people.

Travel a little further down the road & you come upon some stone sculptures that are unfinished.

No sign or explanation of what they are or how they got there.  A little further along we came upon a boat that looks like a race car.

Finally, just a few miles from our hotel was the Dolphin Research Center.  It is a non profit that rescues dolphins & also breeds them.  Pretty educational & we got to see some interesting dolphin activities including people who grab onto two dolphin fins and get pulled around.

There was even some non dolphin creature walking around.

The water around here sure has a green color to it.

All things considered - a very good day.  Tomorrow Key West.

Miami Kendall, FL to Key Largo, FL

 Zero miles out of a possible 52 for me today on the bike.

As I teased yesterday, there was a possibility that we would not be able to get from mainland Florida to the Keys because of a grass fire blocking the only two roads that exist.  For a while yesterday both roads were totally closed.  When we got up this morning, they were allowing only southbound traffic on one of the two roads & no way to get back to the  mainland at all.  It was unclear how bad the smoke was on the road & whether they would even a.low bicycles to travel through.

Everyone was given their choice of what to do.  7 folks said they didn’t want to take a chance on riding, some because of asthma problems, others because they didn’t want to get stuck on the Keys if we weren’t allowed to return on schedule next Tuesday.  Part of the problem was that we lost all 3 of our support crew.  I ended up driving one of the support vehicles rather than riding my bike.  

Eventually there were about a dozen bikers who made the trip.  The smoke wasn’t bad, the bikes were allowed through & everyone arrived safely.  We now have 2 days of riding here in the Keys for a total of a little over 100 miles.  I plan to be back on my bike tomorrow & looking forward to finishing off this adventure.  Since I wasn’t riding, it did give me the chance to take this picture of some of the group leaving.

When we arrived at the first rest stop, which was a gas station, one of the workers came out to tell us to watch for a rooster who likes to steal food from folks.  Here he is.

We’ve been told that there will be lots of rooster sightings in the next few days.

Some of you may be wondering what we do with our bikes over night.  Usually they go right into our hotel rooms.  That sometimes means things are a little bit cramped, but we make do.  My roommate’s bike is extra long, so it won’t fit in an elevator.  Mine folds nicely, so I can usually fit it into the room.  Here you can see both bikes in a first floor room we had yesterday.

I am optimistic that the tire repair we did the other day on my bike is successful & that I can complete these next 100 miles without incident.  You will hear about it here.

Everglades City, FL to Miami Kendall, FL

 I rode 62 of a possible 68 miles today (see below for the story behind that).

This is the well known “Alligator Alley” of Florida, but in terms of seeing alligators - not so much today.  I saw one dead one on the side of the road.  Relatively fresh based on the aroma.  We left at dawn to beat the heat, and it was really nice riding for the first 40 miles.  Not very scenic.

We did pass the smallest Post Office in the US - Ochopee, FL.  It was originally an irrigation pipe shed, but became a post office in 1953 when the original was burned down.  It has served as the post office since then.

Our first rest stop was at a campground & did have a pretty nice Florida look.

I stopped to take this picture since Miami & the Keys have been our goal all along.

After about the 40 mile point, things got interesting, especially for me.  Some of our advance support group had warned us that road construction was coming up, with no shoulder on the road & even in one place, just a single lane road controlled by a portable traffic light.  It turned out to be multiple construction sites for a total of about 10 miles.  Fortunately the traffic in Alligator Alley is not as busy as in a city, but there were still some times that vehicles got stuck behind our bicycles.  We tried to split up the group so no vehicle had to pass 20 bikes at a time.

My extra adventure was that in the middle of one of the no shoulder zones I got a flat tire.  Fortunately it was right near an entrance driveway to a construction site, so I was able to get well off the road to fix the tire.  Another rider stopped to help, which made the job easier.  Thanks Dick!  We also noticed when changing the tube that one of the spokes was broken on the wheel.  That is not something to change until later & the bike can function okay with a broken spoke temporarily.  After about 20 minutes we were back on the road, but only made it another 2 - 3 miles before the same tire was losing air again.  By this point we were only a mile from a rest stop, so we pumped it up & limped in.  At that point I consulted with Alan the mechanic.  We agreed that repairing the tire and the spoke was best done after we arrived at the hotel, so my bike went in the trailer & I rode in the pick up truck for the last 6 miles.  I am grateful that we have great support staff & that my problems occurred in a safe place to work on them.  The new spoke is in & the multiple causes of my flats are resolved.  One was a thin piece of wire that comes from a radial car tire, the other was a small piece of glass (thanks for finding that AD.)  I should be ready for tomorrow!

But wait - we hear on the local news that all roads going to the Keys are closed tonight because of a grass fire.  Stay tuned for the next chapter in this adventure.

Naples, FL to Everglade City, FL

 35 miles today.  No pictures, but some interesting stories.  Our goal today was just to get to a point where tomorrow we can cross from the west side of Florida to the east side.  We need to do that to access the Keys.  The ride tomorrow is through what is called Alligator Alley.  I remember driving through here years ago, but I’m looking forward to seeing it on the bike.

The first interesting story is that we were notified yesterday that our hotel in Everglades City was going to be without power from 9 AM until ???  The power company was replacing poles & wouldn’t give an estimate of when they would be done.  The dilemma was - when to leave Naples.  The heat gets oppressive after noon, but with only 35 miles today, there wasn’t a lot of sense leaving at 7 AM.  Different groups of riders had different ideas, which caused a challenge for our support crew.  They can’t sit at a location for 4 hours waiting for everyone to come through.  In the end it was decided that the rest stop would be open from 11 AM - 1 PM.  Any riders who left at a time that didn’t fit that better have enough water to last the whole ride because there isn’t any place to stop otherwise.  I left with a group of about 10 at 10 AM.

When we arrived at the hotel, the power was out, but the swimming pool was available, so a bunch of us used that to cool down.  Fortunately power came on at about 3 PM, so we are now working on cooling down the room.

The next interesting story is dinner related.  About 12 of us went to a local diner, which wasn’t overly busy & we were served pretty promptly.  We always tell the server when we come into a place that we need to split the bills.  We had 2 couples & 8 individuals.  I’m not sure the server ever encountered that before because when it came time to pay, she had all the drinks on one slip & a strange combination of orders on 5 other slips.  Everything was mixed up.  She said the cashier would straighten it out.  We felt sorry for the cashier.  Our approach was for everyone to tell the cashier what they had to eat & drink.  She would cross those items off a random slip & hoped that everything written down was paid for when it was all over.  Fortunately we are an honest group, so I think it all worked out.  I bet there was a training session for the server after we left.

Early start tomorrow to beat the heat as much as possible.  

Punta Gorda, FL to Naples, FL

70 miles today, with almost all of it on US Hy 41.  We did start out the morning with a river walk type trail to avoid some highway riding, but we discovered some construction going on.  That caused us to walk our bikes through a sand & gravel lot to get back to the trail.  Here’s one of our riders ready to go after that little adventure .

Hy 41 was mostly 4 or 6 lanes with a nice shoulder, but every mile or two is a stoplight, which if you don’t hit it right causes a delay.  As the day got warmer, those delays became uncomfortable.  At least when we’re riding there is some wind created by our movement.  Everyone made it safely to Naples, and no one is complaining that our 4 days in a row of 70 miles each is over.

I promised in an earlier post to get a picture of Alan our bike mechanic.  Here he is working on a bike at a rest stop today.

We are grateful that he is along.  He helped me adjust both my shifting & my brakes, and he has helped a bunch of others with various maintenance & repairs.  He also drives the van with a big trailer that carries bikes and luggage from one town to another.  Thanks Alan!

I mentioned that we have a couple of new riders who joined us in the past few days, and that gives me the opportunity to talk about cadence.  Cadence is how fast you pedal, not how fast you go.  Depending on what gear you are in determines how fast you go.  This comes up because I noticed one of the new riders has a very fast cadence.  It caused me to look up what my comfortable cadence is.  My bike computer keeps track & my average is between 70 & 75 rpm.  This new guy must be about 100 rpm.  

Not much to see on the route today, but here’s a nice picture of what I always remember palm trees to look like.  This is at our hotel for tonight.

Short day tomorrow, so we plan to sleep in a bit.  In answer to a question about how much further we have to go - 257 miles according to the itinerary.  And someone wondering if it was humid the day we rode right after the rain.  Actually I was surprised how fast the road surface got dry, I think because the sun came out, but it always seems humid down here - rain or not.  According to my weather app about 70% relative humidity.

Bradenton, FL to Punta Gorda, FL

 70 miles today in another warm day.  We started at 7:30 AM to try to beat the heat.  Our first 15 miles involved a lot of turns in the city, with a few miles of busy Hy 41.  Then we came to our treat for the day - the Legacy Trail.  An old railroad bed, which always makes a nice bike trail.  There were a bunch of crossing streets which slowed us down.  We have to push the “walk” button and then wait for the traffic to stop.  After 10 or so of those we came to a bridge under construction to allow bikes and pedestrians to cross over on top of the crossing streets which slowed.

Then a few miles further down the trail, we came upon a couple of completed bridges.  Everything is a trade off.  We had to climb the bridge, but no traffic.  The climbs weren’t bad, so I say it was a worthwhile trade off to avoid traffic.  My only complaint is that the pavement going up and down the bridge isn’t smooth.  The concrete is poured so that there are like waves in it.  I’m sure it is done to keep folks from going down too fast - you really have to brake to keep from getting airborne.  Makes for a bumpy ride, but I get it.

Here’s a picture on the trail:

I rode today mostly in a group of 4.  Every day it seems to be a little different combination, but usually we two recumbent riders go together.  We did have a rest stop at an old train station turned into a park & it was probably the most deluxe accommodations we have experienced yet.

One more long 70 mile day, then distances will start to get shorter.