Mermaid doll in an airport gift shop
Distance from Naples to Miami 125 miles
Travel time with stops: 8 hours
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Hotel: Wellesley Inns
Wellesley Inn (Miami Airport)
8436 NW 36th St, MIAMI FL
Check in: 12/31/2003
Check out: 1/1/2004
Room: Nonsmoking King Room With Desk, Includes Continental Breakfast Buffet
Adults: 2
Children: 0
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Flight: from MIAMI to HOUSTON TX
Day and Date: Thu, 1/1/04
Flight: CO 191
Depart: MIAMI, 9:05AM
Arrive: HOUSTON TX, 10:52AM
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Flight: from HOUSTON TX to SAN JOSE CAL.
Day and Date: Thu, 1/1/04
Flight: CO 659
Depart: HOUSTON TX, 11:40AM
Arrive: SAN JOSE CAL., 1:47PM
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The Last Mermaid
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New Year's Eve, our last full day in Florida was hot and surprisingly humid. The light, a shimmering gray twitching at the back of your eye sockets, not good for photographs or humans. The kind of day where you seen to be pushing your way through the air and it pushes back. We started off early, working our way back to Miami along highway 41 (the Tamiami Trail) again, which was not much more interesting in the daylight as it was in the dark. The only difference was in the day you could see the alligators on the sides of the road sunning themselves. And the tourists stopped to peer at the alligators and poke them with sticks.
We stopped first at the Big Cypress National Preserve, but was told by the ranger that there the hiking paths were underwater. "It's winter, honey." We did walk a bit along the canal and accidentally stumbled across a flock of birds feeding in a shallow stream. Finally, the elusive and endangered wood stork and pink roseate spoonbills, great white egrets and blue herons, cattle egrets. It was the largest grouping of birds we'd seen in Florida, right there under the shadow of a small plane airport. I managed to get quite a few shots off before a group of determined tourists arrived, complete with screaming kids and a guide shouting his identification of birds for the more hard-of-hearing members of the group. What a surprise. The flock of birds moved a good 100 yards further away, but this gave them all an excuse to use their binoculars, so it didn't seem to bother them at all.
We stopped at the Miccosukee Indian Cultural Center where they sold t-shirts and weird dolls that looked more like something you would curse someone with and genuine imitation eagle feather Indian headdresses that looked like they were several hundred miles off as far as where they belonged and woven Mexican blankets. They wanted you to pay 15 dollars a head to go into the back where the singers and dancers performed, but the air was just too heavy to remove that kind of cash from our wallets. And I had this terrible suspicion that if we wanted to see real Indians having a real Indian culture, we needed to stop at the Indian casino down the road with a flashing neon sign that looked as if it could be seen from outer space.
Instead we moved on to the Shark Valley Visitor Center. It has a lovely 15 mile winding trail through the everglades originally built by an oil company out looking for oil deposits. The trail is in the middle of the main water flow for the Everglades National Park called Shark River Slough, the water movement measured in inches per year rather than feet per minute. My original plan had been to rent bikes there, but the air was so hot and oppressive, I opted for the lazy white man plan of giving them money to ride the tram. Fortunately, the tram had hard uncomfortable seats or I think both Dean and I would have just collapsed and had a long nap. The advantage of the tram was that there was a naturist telling you fun facts about alligators and the other inhabitants. The disadvantage was that the 5 teenager boys behind us immediately became very bored and started acting up, yelling and hitting each other. Ah, but the joke's on them, but I am now infinitely wiser about the life cycle of the alligator and they are not. Fun fact for the day, alligators can't eat unless they warm their bodies up to 72° F. Colder than that, the food doesn't digest and would rot in their bellies.
The tram stops for half an hour at the far point where there is a 65 foot tower you can go up in to see, wow, what a shocker, more wet-footed grass.
From here we headed back into Miami traffic to the airport hotel. We had a lot of options for New Year's Eve. The biggest being a free concert and fireworks over on Ocean Drive on Miami Beach, but they'd estimated 50,000 people would be there and that sounded like such a huge crowd. I was tempted by the New Year's Eve drag queen parade at the Coconut Grove shopping mall. We ended up heading down to Coral Gables to someplace called the Miracle Mile with stylish stores and restaurants and we chose something Italian where I had delicious osso buca which they assured me was made from veal, not real ox tail with that nasty mad cow potential, and we drank champagne and watched people — the old man with the ruined face, his date a beautiful young olive skinned woman wearing a beaded halter dress she had to keep tugging at to keep from exposing too much of herself. That fine line between seduction and wardrobe malfunction. The couple with the 6 year old little girl, an enormous pink bow in her hair, questioning the waiter about the menu items, with just the right jaded pout. The group of a dozen mid-aged women dressed up sequins and feathered hats, all flirting with the single young man escorting the group.
The next morning it was up at 6:30 am to catch the flight back. The sunrise pink and gentle on the sides of buildings. The airport empty, the airport staff angry and unhappy to be there. Apparently the e-ticket printout I had for Continental didn't include the 15 digit ID number you need to check in and electronic check-in is the only option provided and we were running slightly late. So, we were forced to interact with the angry, possible hung-over, didn't-wanna-be-working-New-Year-Day employees of Continental.
Florida waved goodbye to me from one last mermaid doll smiling from a gift shop window. Goodbye to 2003 and its long paper cluttered tunnel of hard work. We were happy to be home, happy for the fresh, new year. |
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