Alligators And The Tamiami Trail

Ever since I began mapping out the route for our Florida tour, I’ve looked forward to The Tamiami Trail.

The Florida map doesn’t show many choices for crossing the southern part of the state. There’s Interstate 75, the tourist route known as “alligator alley,” and there’s The Tamiami Trail. Since bikes aren’t allowed on interstates, the choices narrow quickly.

A trail? Through the Everglades? No towns for seventy or eighty miles? What sort of images pop into your mind?

Yeah, me too.

Locals tell you, in ominous voices, to make sure you’re stocked up before you leave the corner of Kome Ave & SW 8^th St because there’s no civilization for the next eighty miles. They enjoy conjuring images of a wild, risky crossing. They like you to believe only some combination of Tarzan and Crocodile Dundee would even attempt cycling this untamed track.

Originally, that’s pretty much what it was, a crude trail linking Tampa to Miami (hence, the name). Construction began around 1920. Development and improvement has continued through the decades. Today the “trail” is US highway 41. While it’s certainly isolated and traverses beautiful, rugged, unique terrain, it’s not exactly like traveling into unexplored wilderness.

I’m looking forward to a cyclist’s view of this landscape. Traveling a bit slower, taking time to look around—those are the benefits of cycle touring through such scenic beauty. These will be days to be especially aware.

Originally we planned an early Monday start and a long ride covering as much of the trail as possible. However, a 10:30 am speaking engagement with another group of SAINTS kids necessitated a last-minute audible to a “RICH’S RIDE” version of the crossing. We’ll get started about 12:30. Depending on where we end up we’ll either drive back to Miami or on to Naples. Than on Tuesday we’ll return to our ending point and finish the trip.

Not a typical day of touring, but meeting with those kids makes it worth the disruption.

If you’d like to check out The Tamiami Trail, here’s a  Google Maps link of the route.

If you’re not familiar with Google Maps, the vertical slider on the left zooms in (+)  and out (-). If you’d like to see a satellite view, click in the red circle. If you zoom in a lot, you can drag the little gold guy (green circle) to a spot on the map and see what it looks like. When you’re in that view, the arrows in the yellow circle let you turn to see the view from different angles. Kinda cool.

So if Monte’s going to see an alligator, it’ll likely happen Monday or Tuesday. It won’t bother me if he misses that particular bit of fun.

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After two weeks and 403 miles, we say goodbye to Florida’s Atlantic coast. After navigating the Fort Lauderdale beach road on Saturday, we took the advice of local cyclists and decided not to challenge Miami traffic. Our speaking opportunities took us north and west of the metro area, so we bypassed the city.

The handcycle’s not an urban-friendly vehicle. It’s too low to the ground for good visibility and a bit wide for city biking. So the RICH’S RIDE version of cycle tours has to skip over cities unless we discover a dedicated trail.

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I finally got photos updated. Check out some photos from weeks 1 & 2.

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