Thursday, December 30, 2021; Biscayne National Park and Free Covid testing

 Thursday, December 30, 2021; Biscayne National Park

We checked ourselves out of the Airport/Cruise Port Courtyard Marriott in Fort Lauderdale and headed south.  We stopped and had breakfast at Jack’s Hollywood Diner, just a little south of Jaxson’s Ice Cream Parlor.  This was a very unremarkable diner, but they did have generous portions.  The Totem Diner in Everett is the standard bearer for us.  Jack’s got Ciara’s eggs over medium rather than scrambled, and she got white toast instead of wheat.  I was not impressed that their “skillet” was served on a melamine dish shaped like a skillet instead of on cast iron, and the cheese that was sprinkled on the top was not completely melted.  But we had hearty breakfasts that got us through the day.  

Our next stop was Costco in Kendall, which appears to be the southernmost Costco in the continental US.  The lines at the gas station were insane.  But at $2.94/gal, it was a lot cheaper than most of the gas stations around.  Many are selling regular unleaded for $3.64 per gallon.  

We arrived at our new hotel, the Best Western Gateway to the Everglades in Homestead.  It’s actually a very old two story hotel that wraps around a swimming pool.  The doors all open onto walkways around the pool rather than interior hallways.  It has remodeled a few times in its history, but the fixtures all work, and the AC runs.  Physically, it is a bit run down, but there is a lot around it, including a liquor store, Tropical Pollo franchise, and just about any other business within a walking radius.  It also is situated at the crossroads between Biscayne National Park and Everglades National Park.  Our rooms were not ready, but they allowed us to unload our suitcases from the mini-van into a storage room filled with what had been dining room chairs.  Covid has turned their usual breakfast buffets into grab and go bag breakfasts.  

Since Janet and I have never been to Biscayne National Park, we decided to check that out.  Biscayne National Park is 95% water, primarily accessible by boats, so there isn’t a lot that you can see on foot.  The Visitor center was open and staffed by very friendly and helpful rangers and volunteers.  There were two volunteers situated out front who were displaying vests with hundreds of national park patches, like boy or Girl Scouts showing off their merit badges.  I recently learned theses guys could be called scutelliphiles- collectors of patches or badges.  A ranger did a program where she had young volunteers fish some water samples out of the ranger’s marina.  We then went into the lab where a bunch of microscopes were set up. The microscopes were set up with LCD screens instead of the the usual eye pieces, which are often awkward to look through.  We got to hunt for, and eventually identified several different species of plankton.  

Ben and Price strolled around the Ranger’s marina which had 3 center console boats tied up in it to investigate what was churning up the water in several places.  It turns out these were several schools of sea trout, each containing 15-20 members measuring about 10-14” in length.  These would circle rapidly and then descend like a water funnel, and then come surging up to the surface.  This must be some sort of feeding strategy.  They have some boat tours, but they were all booked up through the holiday weekend.  However, Janet did manage to get us signed up for a introduction to paddling seminar for New Years’ Day at 10am.  

We headed back to the hotel and initially considered relaxing pool side, but Price and Ciara had both received electronic Covid contact notifications on their iPhones.  They must have been exposed on their Southwest Airlines flight to Florida since none of the rest of us received similar notifications.  Although it seems highly unlikely they would be positive at this point since we just finished an 8 day cruise, and nobody was symptomatic, Ciara wanted to get tested before her return flight.  So we located a free testing site in Homestead.  When we arrived at the site, there was a huge automotive cue of hundreds of cars.  It took us an hour and 20 minutes to work our way through the cue, but we did get swabbed and should get PCR results in 1-2 days.  

We had dinner at Mario’s Cuban Cuisine Family Restaurant, which was just a short drive from the hotel.  We had some great Cuban food with Sangria served by nice staff, although they spoke mostly Spanish with only a little bit of English.  John seemed to be able to manage prettty well even though his high school language French courses have been supplemented with time in Europe and exposure to a lot of Spanish in his Jersey City neighborhood.  We’d give it a thumbs up.

After dinner, we sat pool side where it was very pleasant, that is until a group of people upwind lit up cigars.  What a disgusting smell and habit.