2nd Annual SoFla 360 – Part Two – East to West
We prepared to leave the gas station as two other large groups that were there rode out ahead of us. We actually ran into the BMW group later on the ride. Our number of bikes was now 21 as we prepared to get onto US41, the 2-lane highway that preceded the Interstate as Alligagor Alley. The beauty of this ride is the changes in geography. We begin the ride with a lot of sawgrass in the Everglades. We ride past long expanses of the grass with obvious paths cut through it by the airboats. This ride is a peak at what Florida was like 100 years ago.
Riding west, we come to Big Cypress and begin to leave the sawgrass plains behind. Along the right side of the road is a guardrail and then a ditch that is about 10 to 15 feet wide. Along the shore away from the road you see alligators resting in the sun as it rises in the South Florida sky. The temperature is rising and the cold-blooded reptiles come out to warm themselves. What struck us all was the quantity of gators. We say hundreds of them along the shores just a few feet away from us. We saw more alligators in 50 yards of ride than most people see in their lives! They were everywhere and occasionally you’d see a couple riding in a canoe. It must have looked like dinner to some of them. It looked dangerous to us.
We saw a lot of beautiful birds, too. Everything from egrets to herons to eagles to hawks. This is a ride with nature that is perhaps the best in South Florida. Leaving Big Cypress we actually ride along the southern border of Collier-Seminole State Forest.
Riding further along the cypress give way to an open plain that isn’t as wet as the sawgrass swamps. We came to CR92 in Collier county and went down the road that was new to most of us. The short ride of about 5 miles took us to a small causeway and across to Marco Island. We rode through the short island in about 10 minutes and came across another causeway leading us towards Naples and our lunch destination.
Lee
