Life along the Tamiami Trail
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Life along the Tamiami Trail
• Big Cypress Gallery, 52388 Tamiami Trail, about 43 miles from Dade Corners. The world-renowned photographer was not here the day we visited. Sales associate Ailyn Hoey told us he was exhibiting his work in Virginia, after having recently completed America the Beautiful: The Monumental Landscape, a book of photographs taken at 18 national parks in 2006. Perusing Butcher's stark, silver-tinged views of the South Florida landscape is always a treat; his northern images inspire as well. One subject Butcher has failed to capture is the notorious Everglades Skunk Ape -- the smelly, seven-foot tall Big Foot/Sasquatch look-alike reputed to live in the swamp. To view images of the Skunk Ape, you must head for . . . • Skunk Ape Research Headquarters, 40904 Tamiami Trail, about 52 miles from Dade Corners. Chief researcher Dave Shealy, author of Everglades Skunk Ape Research Field Guide, was off conducting field studies in the Big Cypress on the day of our visit. Rick Scholle, working the front desk of the combination gift shop/campground/zoo, didn't give the subject much credence. ''The only thing more elusive than the Skunk Ape is the research into the Skunk Ape,'' he sniffed. ``I'm in charge of the animals that do exist.'' By way of explanation, Scholle led us into the back of the shop where several Burmese and reticulated pythons, a Nile monitor lizard, anaconda, parrots, macaws, and cockatoos reside in pens and cages. Everyone got to hold and pet Sassy the cockatoo, whose attention-getting whistle is so shrill that it got him kicked out of Islamorada's Theater of the Sea. Food for Sassy and the other animals -- including crickets for the snakes -- are delivered from the smallest post office in the United States . . . • The Ochopee Post Office, about 55 miles from Dade Corners. A favorite stop of shutter-snapping European tourists, this eight-foot, four-inch by seven-foot, three-inch building is run by postmaster Nanette Watson, a six-year veteran and Ochopee native. Watson sorts the mail for more than 900 residents from Jerome to Shark Valley, which is delivered by a lone carrier with a route that stretches 132 miles across three counties. Watson loves her job, despite the sometimes intrusive wildlife. ''We used to have pygmies [rattlesnakes] in here really bad till we redid the floor,'' Watson said nonchalantly. ``Snakes, spiders, ants, rats -- that's just part of the job. But I'm not crazy about flying palmetto bugs.'' For the record, Watson has never seen the Skunk Ape. However, a likely place to look might be the . . . • The Big Cypress Bend Boardwalk, about 65 miles from Dade Corners. Here is a 6/10-mile wooden walkway through a dark and mysterious-looking swamp where there's the potential for observing not only the swamp's Sasquatch, but gators, black bear, pileated woodpecker, several varieties of wading birds, even otters. Many of the larger tree trunks are encircled by the boughs of strangler figs, which look like squiggly wooden snakes. The strangler fig once was famously misunderstood by a New York City journalist who thought his guide said ''strangler pig'' and kept an all-night vigil for a tree-dwelling predator intent on throttling him in his sleep. Nearing the end of the sparsely settled portion of the Trail just before the outskirts of Naples is . . . • Collier-Seminole State Park, 20200 E. Tamiami Trail, Naples, about 73 ½ miles from Dade Corners. Here you can camp, hike and bike beneath a thick canopy of royal palms, gumbo limbo, and Jamaican dogwood, or stroll a boardwalk through a mangrove swamp that ends overlooking a salt marsh. You can also launch a boat, canoe or kayak and go fishing. But to truly appreciate all that you have seen in your Trail trek, take a good long look at the peculiar mechanical contraption just past the ranger station. It's a walking dredge that helped dig the highway out of the swamp back in the day -- now designated a historic mechanical engineering landmark. You can thank 1920s Trail investor Barron Collier, for whom the park (and the county) are named, for your quick and easy drive back to Miami.
YouTube | December 1, 2007
