The Miami Dolphins (are tasty)

Way way way back when I was still only in my early 30's (ie: April), Gator Girl and I spent a weekend in Miami. GG had to work there on the Friday, so I caught a plane across on the Friday night so we had the Saturday and Sunday to explore. As most of you with access to an atlas would know, Miami is a long way south, near the point of the Florida peninsula. We got up early on the Saturday morning & headed to the other other side of the peninsula to visit the Everglades National Park. It's an interesting national park, technically a 'subtropical marshland'. To the rest of us, this ends up being a large expanse of flat, submerged grassland with occasional highly vegetated islands, just slightly above the waterline. Effectively it's a flood 160km by 60km wide that's gradually draining down to the south.

As a national park it's not really in great shape. Being a marshland it relies on regular influx of water, most of which is now diverted to the water supply of Miami. It's not helped by a concerted effort to drain it in the late 1800's that helped trash a lot of the native vegetation. It is, however pretty spectacular.

GG showing off the swampy grasslands. Note the mound of green in the distance - this is one of those islands.
Up close you can see the water sitting a few cm deep, with occasional holes in the limestone which make it up to 1/2 m deep.
From a distance it looks like grass, but in reality it's all underwater.



The lush vegetation on one of the islands in the middle of the grasslands.

That evening we drove back to Miami and went and explored the art deco district. Miami is a strange city in some ways - full of construction and skyscrapers, stunning views at every turn, yet home to an funky 50's art deco area and a wide array on influences due to it's proximity to the Caribbean and Cuba. So it's a mix of the fascinating and the standard American.

Menus say a lot about the place you live. Nawlins will have the words "roux"; "ettouffe" & "spicy" on almost every menu you see. Texas always has "biggest"; "fried" & "extra cheese". Whereas in Miami I had flame grilled Cuban beef with Hoisin sauce on Mexican tortillas at an Italian restaurant (served to Australians in America by a Spanish waitress). Now that's fusion cuisine.

Next day we cruised South Beach and checked out all the beautiful people sunning themselves. I lowered the beauty quotient by going for a swim in the Atlantic (after wussing out in Boston). We then headed around some of the islands and checked out places we'd like to live.

Here's me admiring my potential new floating home.

What a lovely bunch of coconuts.

We then headed back to the beach for lunch, and the reason for the title of this blog. We looked at the menu (checking out the healthy choices, of course), to find.....


.............something shocking..................


Check out the third option down on the low calorie options. Oh, if only the Desert Rat were here.

And to finish, I'd just like to say to Violet Femme that again, I haven't blogged about the grand canyon. Well, I'm sorry, but I've got a backlog which I'm working on.....so please have patience with me.