A Reservation that Wasn't

Day 38, May 9, 2011, A Reservation that Wasn’t

72.8 miles, averaging 14.7 mph

Route from Fort Myers Beach to Emerald Isle RV Resort, Everglades City, FL  Outdoor Resorts, Chokoloskee Island, FL

Worst Moment – Our almost worst nightmare came true today.  When I arrived (I got there first) at Emerald Isle RV Resort I found that they had closed for the season and weren’t reopening until November 1.  Yes, we had confirmed reservations by Vickie Wells.

Best Moment – The Emerald Isle Café had a sign in the window saying in addition to souvenirs, burgers, fries and ice cream, they also had area information.  I told the waitress that we had made reservations for the RV Park up the street and they had closed for the season and was wondering if she knew of any other place.  She called one of the women who worked at Emerald Isle.  This woman – it might have been Vickie - confirmed that yes they had closed for the season, but they had notified all of those with reservations.  (Somehow she had missed ours.) 

I asked if there was any other place close by since I was bicycling.  She suggested the Outdoor Resort about 5 miles south of Everglades City.  The waitress called Outdoor Resort for me.  I asked if they had room for us and indeed they did.  Apparently this is the slow season for the Everglades.  Even some of the restaurants are closed for the summer.  Who knew I thought with this being a national park and all – oh well.

The route again was flat with the biggest hills being the embankments leading up to some of the bridges over the bays, rivers and swamps that I was riding through.  Fort Myers Beach actually has a very beautiful beach and a beach town (like Redondo, Hermosa, or Laguna from California) kind of town with good looking and funky looking restaurants, fun bars and souvenir shops. Wish we had been adventurous enough to explore this area yesterday.  I called Neita and told her that she should really check this beach out – she did.

At one point I had thought that I would take photos of interesting mailboxes.  Well most of them sort of look the same.  Yes, there are those with the mail box being inside the mouth of a fish (probably a large mouth bass.)  Today I saw this one and knew I needed the photo for all of my good cycling buddies. 

Naples, FL looks to be an upscale beach town.  In fact, I was talking to a resident when I stopped for coffee who told me that Naples had managed to get rid of most of the problems that other beach cities experienced  (he called them weeds and in addition to seaweed meant the less [in his opinion] desirable kind of people.  The guy was sort of a cynic.  When I was telling him about my ride and that I was raising money for the Lance Armstrong Foundation, he asked if it was for his (Lance’s) defense fund.  Then asked if I knew Lance Armstrong.  Or, if I knew Sheryl Crow.

Shortly after leaving Naples, the Tamiami Trail swings east and heads through the Everglades.  Very interesting landscape.  This has been an extremely dry year for this swamp and many of the rivers and pools have turned to drought cracked mud.

Arriving at Outdoor Resorts was easy for me since I had studied the map and sort of was thinking about coming over to Chokoloskee Island on my day off.  However, trying to tell Neita how to get here was more troublesome.  I didn’t have the address for her to enter into her GPS and there were some very “tricky turns” going through Everglades City.  Unfortunately the streets did not have road signs making it impossible to know that one was indeed on County Road 29 South.  She finally got here and we have a wonderful view of the Everglades.  This place is truly a boaters’ paradise and folks are out water skiing, fishing and just generally boating.  I’m sure that during the “season” it must be really crazy.

In case you are interested in making a donation to the Lance Armstrong Foundation so they can help people with cancer, here is my link http://grassroots2011.livestrong.org/billsbigride197