The Overseas Highway Towns Worth Stopping In
Drive south on the Overseas Highway and the Keys change character every few islands. Key Largo is a diving town, with John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park, the first undersea park in the country, right off US 1. Islamorada is boats and fishing charters, and Marathon is where the road heads out onto the Seven Mile Bridge with open water on either side. By Big Pine Key the pace drops, Key deer come out late in the day, and Bahia Honda's beaches are just back up the road. Key West is the loud finish, with a crowd at Mallory Square every night for the sunset. Each town is worth the stop, and each one is best at its own hour.
Key Largo
A southbound driver reaches Key Largo over the high bridge at Jewfish Creek, around Mile Marker 107, and seven miles on, at Mile Marker 100, the African Queen is tied up at the Marina Del Mar. The 1912 steam launch from the 1951 Bogart and Hepburn film makes a 1.5-hour run down the Port Largo canals to the Atlantic and back, leaving at 10 a.m., noon, 2 p.m. and 4 p.m., for $59 an adult and $25 for children 4 to 12. Passengers can ask the captain for a turn at the helm, and the old steam whistle blows along the way.
Back up the road, near Mile Marker 102.5, John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park opens its gates at 8 a.m., and entry is $8 a car plus 50 cents a person. Glass-bottom boats leave for the reef three times a day and snorkel boats four times, and boat tours out of Key Largo visit Dry Rocks, where the 9-foot bronze Christ of the Abyss stands in about 25 feet of water. Birders drive a few miles farther north, half a mile up County Road 905 from the US 1 intersection at Mile Marker 106, to Dagny Johnson Key Largo Hammock Botanical State Park, where more than 20 species of wood-warblers pass through in spring and fall and the $2.50 fee goes in an honor box, correct change only.
Tavernier
A day in Tavernier, a few miles past Key Largo's dive shops, can start early, since Sunrise Cuban Market & Cafe opens at 5 a.m. Later in the morning, the small beach at Harry Harris Park, oceanside at Mile Marker 92.5, sits behind a coral rock barrier that keeps the water calm enough for young children, with covered pavilions and a fishing jetty beside it. Lunch can end with a key lime pie from Blond Giraffe Key Lime Pie Factory, and Jolene's Hidden Treasures, a thrift shop, is packed with vintage Harley-Davidson shirts. The stop worth timing is the Florida Keys Wild Bird Center, about a mile back up the road at 93600 Overseas Highway, a free sanctuary for injured birds. A boardwalk leads past enclosures holding some 90 large birds and out to a view of Florida Bay, and in the afternoon the pelicans gather at the center's waterfront for a feeding.
Islamorada
Islamorada begins on the far side of Tavernier Creek, and its stops come one after another for about 11 miles of US 1, starting with the dolphin and sea lion shows at Theater of the Sea, Mile Marker 84.5, where general admission is $49.95 for ages 11 and up. Three miles farther, on the third Thursday of every month, the Morada Way arts district between Mile Markers 81 and 82 holds an art walk between 6 and 9 p.m., with open studios, live music and the Florida Keys Brewing Co. beer garden. Lisa Lee works there in gyotaku, the traditional Japanese method of printing a fish in ink, and she makes prints of fish people caught themselves, which suits a village its chamber of commerce calls the Sportfishing Capital of the World.
At Mile Marker 77.5 Bayside, Robbie's of Islamorada charges $2.50 admission, and $5 buys a bucket of fish for the tarpon that wait off its docks. The feeding area is part of a working marina, where boats and kayaks are rented for the water out toward Alligator Lighthouse and Cheeca Rocks and daily charters head out from the slips. Fresh Coconuts and the Glass Shack are among the stalls of its open-air market, and the Hungry Tarpon restaurant is on the same property.
Four miles farther south, Anne's Beach at Mile Marker 73.5 costs nothing, and its boardwalk runs past shallow water for wading and six pavilions with picnic tables, with dogs welcome.
Marathon
Marathon, in the Middle Keys, is the stop for sea turtles, and the Turtle Hospital at Mile Marker 48.5 runs guided tours every half hour between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m., rain or shine. Each group goes through the hospital and its rehabilitation area, and at the end visitors are invited to feed the permanently disabled turtles that live in a 100,000-gallon saltwater pool. Tickets are $38 for adults and $19 for children 4 to 12, and reservations are recommended.
The hospital holds public releases of its rehabilitated turtles at Sombrero Beach, a mile and a half up the highway at Mile Marker 50, where parking beside the sand is free and the beach is a designated sea turtle nesting zone April through October. Before the drive goes on over the Seven Mile Bridge, the old bridge beside it is open for a 2.2-mile walk or bike ride out to Pigeon Key, which charges admission, with the new span alongside and open water on either side.
Big Pine Key
The small, endangered Key deer of Big Pine Key are most often seen early in the morning and late in the afternoon, and the trails of the National Key Deer Refuge open a half hour before sunrise. At Blue Hole, a short paved path of 0.17 mile ends at an observation platform over a freshwater pond in an old quarry, where an alligator is sometimes spotted. The Jack Watson Nature Trail is a two-thirds-mile loop in full sun, easier walked in the cooler early hours, and the refuge asks visitors not to pet or feed the deer.
Bahia Honda State Park, back toward the Seven Mile Bridge at Mile Marker 36.8, is a morning stop for a different reason. On busy days it closes at capacity and asks arriving visitors to return later, so drivers who want the mile-long Sandspur Beach and the view from the old Bahia Honda Bridge span come early, and the fee is $8 a carload. The No Name Pub is a turn off US 1 at Mile Marker 30.2, with thousands of dollar bills covering every surface, and the pizza is what most people order. Captain Hook's runs a Looe Key Reef snorkel trip from Big Pine at 9:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m., about four hours with mask, fins and vest included, from $54, and each July speakers hung beneath boats at Looe Key play music for the hundreds of divers and snorkelers at the Underwater Music Festival.
Key West
About two hours before sunset every night, magicians, jugglers, psychics and local musicians take over Mallory Square in Key West for the Sunset Celebration, with food vendors and artists set up among them at 400 Wall Street. Fire-eaters are part of the lineup, the show is free to watch, and the performers work only for the tips the crowd gives them. As the sun gets low, the crowd turns toward the water to watch it go down.
US 1 itself ends at the green-and-white Mile Marker 0 sign on Whitehead Street, just before Fleming. During the day, $2.50 gets a walker or cyclist into Fort Zachary Taylor Historic State Park, on the southern edge of the island, where the beach has some of the best snorkeling from shore in the Keys by the park's own account and snorkel gear rents at the chickee hut. At the Hemingway Home, where general admission is $19, nearly 60 six-toed cats live on the grounds, each named for someone famous.
The road stops in Key West, and the Yankee Freedom ferry keeps going, leaving at 8 a.m. for Dry Tortugas National Park, almost 70 miles west. The ticket includes the $15 park entrance fee, snorkel gear and a 45-minute narrated tour of Fort Jefferson, and the boat is back in Key West around 5:15 p.m.
By the end of the road, most of these stops turn out to come with an hour attached. Pennekamp's reef boats, the Key deer trails and the Bahia Honda lot are all best reached early, and the Tavernier pelicans are fed in the afternoon, so a single day of driving gets to most of them at the wrong time. A night in Marathon splits the trip near the middle, with the turtle tours and the walk out to Pigeon Key on one side of the Seven Mile Bridge and the Key deer about 20 miles away on the other, close enough to reach at first light. The Florida Keys Overseas Heritage Trail is the slower way through, with more than 90 miles of paved path, built in segments beside the highway, and its longest unbroken stretch in the Upper Keys. However the trip is divided, it finishes on a Key West street corner, at a green sign with a zero on it.
