Florida - Day 18 - north to Bradenton

Bradenton/Hunsader Farms KOA, Bradenton
Friday, 3 February 2023

I was already up when Dext told me, at 3:30, that he wanted to go outside.  He's not usually up this early so I knew he must have the runs again.  And he did.  He keeps eating whatever takes his fancy when we go out for walks, though I try hard to anticipate/stop him, with varying success.  I know from experience that this round will last for a little over a day before his system gets back to normal.  Hard on both of us, though I seem to be the only one of the us who understands cause and effect.

When we got back to the RV, I found the kittens had knocked my stuff off the table - the earpieces on my glasses are now even more chewed than they'd done the last time.  I try to cover that stuff up - it includes my phone and camera also - and hope out-of-sight-out-of-mind will work, but it's about as successful as my don't-eat technique works on Dexter.

At 7:00, we went back to the visitor center so I could upload that Starke post I'd finished yesterday.  Sunrise is at 7:04 today, and I saw as I had yesterday that workers were gathering here before being taken out to wherever they were all working.

Visually tack the map below to the lower right side
of this map for today's route.

Some, but not all, of the route from the Everglades
up to the Tamiami Trail.  The park entrance is farther south still.

On the part of the road that's too far south even for this map we passed signs for the Schnebly Winery.  They bill themselves as the southernmost winery in the US.

I passed quite a few fields planted with crops and saw agricultural workers already out working before 8:00 (trying to beat the heat, I guess).

One of the most recent controversies generated by Gov. DeSantis is his criticism of the Advanced Placement African-American studies program for high school students.  The Miami NPR station was interviewing a man who'd been teaching a black history course for years who said, "If you don't know who you are, then you won't know where you're going."  Which makes a lot of sense to me.

Driving through Homestead, we passed the First United Methodist Church and I was interested in the way it looked.

This church was started in 1973, so this sort of Spanish mission style is likely a nod to their surroundings rather than suggesting extreme age as I'd first thought.

The speed limit heading north was 50 mph, but I had so many cars tailgating me I went up to 60 and they were still passing me. 

In one section that was 2 lanes on each side, I signaled to move into the left lane, then started moving left, and then a white car that had been behind the guy behind me apparently couldn't see my signal and suddenly pulled up fast on my left trying to pass me as I was trying to move left to pass another guy.  I saw him as he swerved onto the shoulder and almost lost his traction, but just in time he managed to swerve back into the left lane.  Meanwhile the semi that had been behind me had moved up to take my place when I moved left, so I didn't have any room to move back right again to get out of the white car's way.  It was all really scary.  Florida drivers are absolutely worse than Texas drivers, which is pretty hard to do.  And though you might think that's because of the plethora of senior citizens here, that's not who's been driving the cars I've had trouble with.

I started to see concrete utility poles that had pointed caps on them.  So birds won't roost on them?

I turned onto the Tamiami Trail that was 2 lanes total with a speed limit of 45 most of the way.  Again, I bumped it up to 55 to keep from getting run over and still folks were passing me.  I just hoped no wildlife was silly enough to think it was safe for them to cross the road.

I heard on the radio that North Miami Beach has the most budget-friendly rent in the area: $1800/month, though I don't know what size place that'd get you.

Driving along this 2-lane road with almost no services, Dexter suddenly told me he needed to relieve himself again.  Right now.  Thank goodness just then we came to the Midway Campground in the Big Cypress National Preserve.  The signs told us they didn't want us there because we didn't have a reservation but I stopped anyway.  A woman was sitting outside the RV at the camp host site, so I went over and asked her permission to stop just a few minutes to walk my dog, and she agreed, though somewhat reluctantly I thought.  Just in time, I think, for Dext.

Driving along the Tamiami Trail, I saw many small egrets (to me their species is distinguishable only by their leg color and bill color, which I can't usually see while driving).  A Great Egret and a Great Blue Heron (easy to spot because of their size), and a small blue heron which was likely a Little Blue Heron that wasn't in breeding plumage.

Little Blue Heron -
from the internet

They're half the size of a Great Blue.  And I think I saw a Pileated Woodpecker.

Pileated Woodpecker -
also from the internet

This is what they look like but it doesn't begin to convey how big they are.  These birds are 16½" long and, assuming the Ivory-billed Woodpecker is extinct, this is now North America's biggest woodpecker.  He was flying from one tree to another, but you can see that the coloring is pretty unmistakable.

We finally hit I-75 to head north and, though I'd hoped for a rest area, I didn't find one.  Eventually we pulled off and stopped at a Subway for lunch, just to be allowed to park somewhere so Dext could walk.

Here and there I saw highway signs twisted and torn, and since the interstate is farther inland than US-41 which I'd taken going south, I was surprised that the hurricane damage would show up more here than on the more westerly road.

The radio said there are still 500 deaths/day from covid.  Understanding that's a drop in the bucket compared to where we were a couple of years ago, that's still a whole lot of people.  So I still always wear a mask indoors.

I passed Venice, "City on the Gulf."  A sign told me I could turn for the Venice Historic District, which I've learned from the city's website "dates back to the 1920s."  Come on, folks.  The 1920s aren't old even for the west coast, let alone a state that includes a city founded in 1565.  Anyway, I'd've liked to have more time to spend here, despite having come here several times with Momma.  Her college roommate lived here and they stayed in touch their entire lives.  So when I drove Momma over to see Uncle Tom in Orlando, we always came a few hours farther to visit Shirley.  She liked living here very much and used to tell us it's one of the few places along the FL west coast that was rarely hit by hurricanes.  I thought about her when Hurricane Ian came along, though she wasn't here to see the damage it caused.

Floridians don't like to signal when they change lanes.  Maybe that car this morning tried to pull around me because he didn't recognize my turn signal for what it was.

Rain was in the forecast, and we'd been driving toward dark clouds for some time.  Sure enough, sudden hard rain hit.  For some reason, it was along here that I saw a sign saying: "Florida law - headlights on in the rain."

We passed Sarasota, another town I'd like to visit when I'm here again.  A sign said the Ringling Museum was here, and I looked it up but, sadly, they charge $23 as the reduced senior rate, so I'll have to miss it.

We crossed the Braden River and drove on another 12 miles to tonight's campground.  

This was another weird place, though I admit the unpleasant weather may have colored my perceptions somewhat.  But I swear I saw a zebra with some cows in a large pen.  Only half (or less) of this place is the campground.  The rest is farmer's market/petting zoo/miniature train/u-pick fields.  We got there by 2:00 but apparently all that stuff won't operate until Saturday (tomorrow).

The campground is oddly laid out and the roads are all dirt, making them mostly mud right now.  I took Dext over to the very large dog park (also mostly mud) and other people kept not letting their dogs come play with Dext.  He was obviously disappointed.