Valley Of The Sharks Adventure

Today, on my Sunday (see the last post about my crazy weekends and how Friday can be Monday) I decided to visit Shark Valley, which is part of Everglades National Park.

Shark Valley is located on the northern border of the national park. It is close enough to Miami to drive to in less than an hour, yet far enough out in the swamp that no trace of the city can be seen. There is no overnight camping in Shark Valley, but there is a 15 mile road open to foot traffic, bicycles, and the park tram. About halfway down the tram road is an obversation tower that offers a stunning view of the swamp.

Everglades National Park is 1.5 MILLION acres of what is left of the Everglades. As large as this park is, it is only a fraction of what used to be the everglades. At one time, half the state of Floirda was part of the everglades. In addition to this national park, there is also Big Cypress Park (administered by the State of Florida), land designated as a watershed by the South Floirda Water Management District (the water management people are finally trying to use their land to restore the swamp, it seems they realize that no everglades means no drinking water), and land graciously given to the Miccosukkee Indian Tribe by pale face.

Shark Valley used to be owned by Shell Oil Company. The company built some of the paved road that the tram uses today. Shell was looking for oil, and unlike President Bush's oil companies they found some. But the everglades oil was loaded with sulfur, and at the time there was no way to seperate the oil from the sulfur. So they declared the land worthless. The company gave the land to the National Park when they were done. The park service added to the road, forming the loop.

You will see TONS of critters in the area. There are birds, tutles, snakes (you have to look carefully for the snakes, they are good at finding places to hide) and of course alligators. If you want to see alligators, Shark Valley is the place to go.

I went there to ride the tram road on my bicycle. I did pretty good! Here are my numbers.

Max speed - 16.6 mph
Moving time - 1 hr 15 min
Total time - 1 hr 27 min
Distance - 14.77 miles
Moving avg speed - 11.7 mph

I was going into a head wind for half the ride. Most of my stopped time was spent on the observation tower. The first half of the ride I finished in 30 minutes, for an avg speed of close to 14 mph.

I attribute some of this to the new tires I got. My old tires were 2.2 inch knobby tires. The new tires are 1.9 inch hybrid tires. The center part of the tire is a slick, with knobs on the outer edge. Properly inflated, the bike rides on the slick center part of the tire, which gives the tires even lower rolling resistance. The tires also have less road noise than the knobby dirt trail tires had.

I could not fit my digital camera into anything, so I did not bring it along. All I had was a small saddle bag, which was way to small for my camera. All the saddle bag could hold was a spare tube, a tube patch kit, a pocket knife, and a pressure guage.

I plan to go back to Shark Valley next week. I went out and bought a cool bag that snaps onto my cargo rack, so now I have a bag large enough to pack the camera, all the stuff I had today, and still have some space left over. I will have photos to post on this site. My camera has a mode where it will shoot fairly high resolution photos in a 16:9 aspect ratio - PERFECT for capturing the view from the observation tower. There will also be many alligator photos.

What there will NOT be any photos of are sharks OR any valley. None of these things are even in Shark Valley. Go figure.