Everglades Adventure

View from our outside (picnic) table at Everglades City fish house 

Jane's Scenic Drive--notice the GPS

My humans left me again---said they were going to find lunch and would be back.  They didn’t get home until dark!  They had a real adventure.  They went to Marco Island just to check it out and then on to Everglades City for shrimp and fish.  They have driven the Tamimiami Trail several times and decided to find a different way back.  There is a road in the Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park called Jane’s Scenic Drive.  (This state preserve boarders Big Cypress and Everglades National Parks---to give you an idea of its remoteness and location).  The road was 11 miles long and, according to their map, dumped them off in a subdivision near Naples.  There was a sign at the beginning of the road that said that the road was closed dusk to dawn and another that said rough road.  The first mile wasn’t too bad, but the rest was a different story.  Ron said that he didn’t get over 5mph for the next 10 miles. The road was a two track filled with pot holes through a mangrove swamp.  After about 2 hours t miles they finally made it to the “subdivision”.   It was the infamous Golden Gate Estates! 112,000 acres  (80 square miles) of failed Florida development…..they are following the GPS trying to navigate the maze of  880 miles of crumbling roads when they were flagged down by a German couple coming towards them.  They said that they were lost and that there is a gate with a lock on it across the road out of the area.  A car pulled up that also had just come out of the scenic drive and it had Florida plates---so they were consulted about the best way to get back to civilization.  It was a rental and they were as lost as everyone else.  Anyway, they decided they were not going to go back the way they came and to stick together.   Ron led the procession.  When they got to the locked gate there was a big sign beside it -DETOUR- (Apparently Germans didn’t know what that meant).  After about 17 more miles of dirt road---they all made it back.  I put one link in about Golden Gate Estates---Google it if you get a chance.  The story is amazing.  The development of this subdivision originated the phrase – buying swampland in Florida.

Street in Golden Gate Estates

Yesterday they spent the day at the pool.   The day before, they started out at the pool until Nancy managed to go swimming with her cell phone in the bathing suit.  The rest of the afternoon was spent finding a Sprint company owned store (ended up driving to Bonita Springs)and getting a new phone.