There's a road that runs through Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park that used to be a smooth, gray strip of asphalt, a long carpet that rolled through the grass.
One early Sunday morning, before the sun came up, smoke from a nearby brushfire crept onto a stretch of it, obscuring the view of drivers passing through. Accidents ensued.
Between mile markers 379 and 380, toward the south end of the prairie, 12 cars and seven semitrailers were involved in pileups that resulted in fires on both sides of Interstate 75.
The vehicles that caught fire in the southbound lanes — two semitrailers and an SUV — left scars on the pavement.
One mile of the highway took the lives of 11 people Sunday morning. The asphalt running through the prairie is no longer that rolled-out carpet.
Leo and Betty Hein, both 75 years old, drive from eastern Iowa to Fort Lauderdale every year. It's the couple's six-week getaway.
"It's odd this year," Leo said. "We keep looking for where it happened instead of enjoying the drive."
Twenty feet of asphalt just past mile-marker 379 is discolored and disfigured from the fires.
A black shadow lurks over the middle and right lanes. The burned black pavement is spotted with four mounds of gritty asphalt, each about as wide as a beach ball and as tall as a speed bump.
When cars speed over the bumps and the 20 feet of tarnished road, tires grumble.
The Florida Department of Transportation will repave the two burned southbound lanes, most likely within the next month, FDOT spokeswoman Gina Busscher said.
Most of the damage is only in southbound lanes, Busscher said. There are little cuts in the pavement going northbound to be repaired near mile-marker 380. Despite this, she was reassuring.
"Drivers should not be hesitant," she said. "There is no danger here."
Until the inspectors at FDOT determine the extent of the road damage, Busscher said, the cost of the repairs will be unknown.
On the grassy side of the road, there are tire marks etched deep where emergency vehicles and cleanup personnel pulled over.
Tiny black pebbles sprinkle the right shoulder.
Though most of it is cleaned up, mementos of that day remain. Debris is still sprawled throughout the dirt and grass beside the southbound highway. Charred Puffs tissue wrappers, which caused one of the semitrailers to engulf in flames, still remain. Torn pages of what looked like a GRE or SAT test-prep book were scattered among the tire marks.
Paynes Praire Rest Area sits on the southbound side across from the Williston exit, right before the prairie land takes over.
Debbie Finch, a 61-year-old rest area attendant, said about 20 people stopped and asked her if it was safe to drive up ahead since Monday.
That is not normal, she said.
"I get scared, too," Finch said. "I have to drive over it when I go home every night, and it is terribly uncomfortable to think about what happened there."
The southbound lanes of Interstate 75 near Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park were damaged by Sunday's series of wrecks, which claimed 11 lives.
