Saturday: I woke up in Miami already having almost everything packed in my car and started on one of the most scenic drives in the nation- the overseas highway. Its about 160 miles from Miami down to Key West. The overseas portion is just over 100 miles and has 42 bridges including one that is almost 7 miles long! Key West is the end/start of US 1 which is also the longest highway in the US since it goes all the way up to Maine. Everything in the keys is marked or addressed by their mile marker because truly US 1 is the only main road in the entire area. Further things are either Ocean side or bayside/gulf side (depending how far down in the keys you are). I always find neat systems like that to be fascinating and cool to figure out and use. The other crazy thing is just how many boats there are down here. The entire entertainment is the ocean and going out on the water- the land isnt super interesting. So I definitely see why the area is great for tourism but of course a fair amount of people live here. Driving along the overseas highway
You can see in my pictures what the typical scenery looks like along the drive- most of the highway is about 45 mph but its just gorgeous so I stopped a lot too 😊 Including stopping at Long Key State Park for a very humid 1 mile hike (thats all the hiking the park had lol). Once I was in Key West I drove around a little and got a feel for the island- Duval street is packed and full of tourist and unfortunately there as an almost hour long line to take your picture with the southern most point of US figure. Thats right people were standing around when it was 87* and humid for almost an hour for a photo. I dont understand it.
I will say this airbnb is a jackpot for a solo traveler- outdoor shower, clawfoot tub and access to a free bike to use to get around town. So get around town on the bike I did. Went to Duval street which was packed at first but then it emptied out because people went back to their cruise ship-
which was fun to watch depart the bay! Key West definitely has some amazing food from my first day here. Tried some Conch Fritters (pronounced conk) which were delicious! Dinner was a full moon burger at Sloppy Joes. This was supposedly Ernest Hemingways favorite establishment when he lived in Key West. They had a great guitarist playing music and an awesome atmosphere. Man what a day!
Sunday: Dry Tortugas National Park. My entire motivation to going down to key west! Dry Tortugas is the most remote national park in the lower 48. (There are some insanely remote parks in Alaksa and then one in Guam). After the drive down to key west it is still another 70 miles via boat or airplane to reach dry tortugas. The national park is also 99% water with 7 island keys (there used to be 11 but 4 were taken back by the ocean) being the only land. The largest island is Fort Jefferson and the only island you can visit unless you get there by private boat. Only about 70k people visit the park each year- which works out to be a little under 200 people per day. The one public ferry
brings 160 passengers every day except Christmas and you can also charter a sea plane to get there quicker but youll spend a lot of money on that!
So what is so special about dry tortugas national park? Its basically the of history and nature all together. Fort Jefferson is the last Florida key and was a pivotal military location in the 1800s. It was one of the biggest Forts ever built (though never actually finished) and had plans for up to 460 cannons- but not a single canon was ever fired. Looking at the geography having a huge military base at Fort Jefferson allowed the US to threaten and control the gulf of mexico trade routes. The best history fact I learned of the day was that the fort had 0 canons on the island still at the start of the civil war.
