ZooMiami

I’m not sure what’s happened to the blog; I’ve started writing many times and always end up deleting the post. Nothing I write seems to be blog worthy anymore; maybe it’s just run its course.

We’re still in south Florida, Millie said this is our fourth year staying here at Southern Comfort RV, I think it’s only our third. We have had the same neighbor from Canada every year; they’ll be back again next year, as will we. 

We still go to the gym four days a week, this week on our day off, we visited the Miami Zoo. Like a lot of south Florida, they are still repairing damage from hurricane Irma. They didn’t suffer the devastation like August 1992 when Andrew just about destroyed it. Most of the Irma damage appeared to be trees blown over; many of them have been pushed back upright and are supported with braces.

The zoo animals are contained in large natural settings, usually with a mote and/or a shock fence to keep the them in their designated areas. There are no animals in steel cages like zoo’s of my youth. This means the zoo covers a very large area, it is over 300 acres all total. 

So if you visit here, you better have your good walking shoes on, because you will walk many miles on the paved trail through the habitats. Your only other options are renting a 2 or 4 passenger pedal car or taking a guided tram tour. The monorail which was destroyed in Andrew is back in service but it really doesn’t offer a good view of most of the critters. It’s just a good way to move from one section of the zoo to another. 

Photography club from a local school

Most of the animal residents are endangered in their natural environments, almost always from loss of habitat and hunting when humans move into their neighborhoods. The other reason is more troubling, that is poaching to profit from selling animal parts.

 I try to keep the blog topics light and it’s usually when I venture into controversial subjects that I end up deleting the whole thing, but our zoo visit has left me with a nagging question. Is it ok to keep animals in these artificial environments just for our amusement? The zoo supporters say we are saving them from extension. While these chosen few creatures are safe, putting animals on display in the “civilized” world has done absolutely nothing to stop the destructive nature of man.

It’s a conundrum, I don’t have any answers.

Short visit to the Keys

It’s hard for us to believe, but January is almost over. We’re kind of surprised the time has passed so quickly because we haven’t really done much while waiting out the winter here in south Florida. 

This past Wednesday we finally took time from our busy schedule (that’s a joke folks) to ride down to the Keys. We were curious to see what damage was done by the Hurricane Irma. Irma was the Mega storm that had the whole east coast watching its path and hoping it would not hit them. The September storm cut a swath thru the Caribbean islands before turning north and taking aim at Florida. 

Here in the campground we had heard descriptions of “Complete devastation”, very few businesses left running and all the hotels on Key Largo wiped out. Next we were told all the businesses are going broke because there are no tourists. The only way to know the truth was a road trip to see for ourselves.

First a disclaimer, we only drove halfway down the chain of islands and did not go past Marathon. The eye of the storm hit the lower keys between Marathon and Key West. 

Sombero Beach in Marathon still being restored

Not to discount the personal tragedy of those who did lose their property to the storm, the keys have survived. We did see evidence of a lot of storm damage and there’s still some debris being cleaned up. We saw some businesses closed, but most of the structures survived, in fact I think there are more roofs still covered in blue tarp here in Homestead than in the Keys. 

As you would expect most of the structures that were lost were waterfront and hit by the storm surge. The newer homes built to hurricane code all seemed to have faired very well. We saw several trailer parks that some of the homes closest to the water were destroyed and all the ones several streets back are ok.

My last boat was like the one in the background

At the southern end of Marathon the Knights Key RV Resort is completely gone, but it had nothing to do with the storm. It is another campground that is being replaced with housing. There will probably come a day when there are no RV parks left in the Keys, the land is just too valuable. 

Knights Key Campground being redeveloped as condo's

The road is open, send the tourists, Life goes on in the Keys.