Some serious city riding

Miami
March 16, 2019
Dania Beach through Miami to Florida City
59.6 miles
Dania Beach is a typical beach town with a boardwalk and little shops. There is a bike and walking path along the boardwalk leading out of town and into Hollywood Beach. It is busy with joggers and cyclists and people walking along drinking coffees. Hollywood is much larger and the high rise buildings begin here and continue straight through Miami.

We take a rest before entering downtown Miami

Hollywood Beach boardwalk 

Today we will ride right through downtown Miami. It is Saturday so I am hoping the traffic might be less congested than normal.

There are plenty of drawbridges along the way.  The green lanes are the bike lanes.

There are bike lanes on all the main roads and they are clearly marked. The drivers seem to be accustomed to sharing the road. Tom loaded the adventure cycling route into the ride with .gps software and is able to listen to the turn by turn directions in one earphone while listening to his surroundings with the other ear. I am just following. In the end, it isn’t as terrible as I anticipated. We did some city riding a few years ago when Ellen was living in Chicago and that was good preparation for us.

One beautiful older skyscraper tucked in among so many others.

Once we get through the city center there is a dedicated bike path (just for bikes - no cars) leading south through Dade County. It follows the high speed rail line and runs beside a road designed solely for bus travel. This is all parallel to Route 1. The South Dade trasnsitway is a great design for multimodal travel and keeps everyone as safe as possible. The county has an initiative to use the “underline” space as a green space. Currently it’s a bit of a mess, but the potential is there.

This bike path goes right through the metrorail stations which also serve as city bus depots.  

The RV park where we had planned to camp is in Homestead and has the feel of a rundown trailer park with the definite probability for meth production and other illegal activity.   Fortunately, the Days Inn a mile and a half away has a room which seems like a much safer choice.  We sleep in air conditioned bliss and safety.