A Paradise of Blue and Green

Enjoy serenity, a playground, and panoramas next to the Rickenbacker Causeway

Alice C. Wainwright Park. It’s strikingly unique and beautiful, and it earns my highest ranking for a park run by the City of Miami. It’s a paradise of green and blue. Alice’s park is the opposite of the Dolphin Expressway, the anti-expressway. It makes you feel sorry for people who don’t live here. Situated at the busy crossroad of the Rickenbacker Causeway with the mainland, the park is buffered from noisy traffic by a conservation area that covers most of its 21.44 acres. You know the bushy area on your right as you approach the Rickenbacker tollbooth? That’s it. You can’t see much from the road. As part of the five-mile Commodore Trail, the roads around the park attract joggers and cyclists. To get there by car (on a weekday), turn east onto the road immediately north of Vizcaya. Enter the park through a black metal gate located in the center of SE 32nd Road. Families appreciate the basketball court and clean playground, completed in 2010 and surrounded by open grass. Also in 2010, a series of exercise stations were installed near the bay. But the real attraction is the view. Full of fossils, the cliff features linear tube-shaped formations that were constructed by an ancient burrowing shrimp, reminding us that this location was underwater in the distant past. Made of Miami, or oolitic, limestone, the cliff extends northward for about 300 feet before disappearing into the soil. Below the cliff is the park’s newest feature: Veteran’s Grove. Dedicated on May 25, 2012, its stone benches and memorial plaque were donated by Team Stand Up and Reach Miami. The park’s prime real estate along the waterfront is a grassy meadow about 50 feet wide that takes a sharp turn left and continues for several hundred feet to the causeway. This strip joined to the opening makes a giant L-shape. With no obstructions, the simple seawall frames a spectacular view of blue. Key Biscayne, although in sight, appears insignificant compared to the open water around it. Here’s where the barracuda and the needlefish play. Look down and you’ll see them. Shallow Biscayne Bay blends seamlessly into the deep Atlantic Ocean. Colorful sailboats hover in the distance. To your left are bridges over still waters, to your right is Mercy Hospital. Closer still is the bizarre stone barge, part of Vizcaya Museum and Gardens, that perches in the water like a petrified wreck. Unlike that estate, which costs $18 to enter, this view is free. (http://www.biscaynetimes.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1712:a-paradise-of-blue-and-green&catid=42:park-patrol&Itemid=226)