This is a continuation of my stories from my family’s South Florida roadtrip. We started out exploring Miami and the Everglades, followed by Biscayne and the Florida Keys. You can click on either of those to find their stories. At this point, we had really enjoyed each section of the trip and had one last day together before the end of the trip. For our last day, we had planned to explore Key West, a city that most of us had been to before in 2012, but it would be new for Christian and Logan. After having an easy morning where we could all sleep in, we finally left for the final stop on the Overseas Highway! We made a quick stop at Baby’s Coffee on the way down so Mom and Audrey could get their coffee. It’s actually the southernmost coffee roaster in the continental United States, and this is a very common theme throughout Key West. Everyone claims to be the “southernmost this” or “southernmost that.”
So we left the southernmost coffee roaster then drove across the southernmost bridge into the southernmost town on the southernmost island, passing the southernmost beach resort by the southernmost bar in order to visit the Southernmost Point of the continental United States! This is one of the four corners of the US, and while I had been here before, it’s still an exciting stop to make. I failed to get a picture with it in 2012, so it was a must this time. If you ever come here, just expect there to be a line because it’s a very popular spot for pictures. So we got in this long line, and the heat was very intense here! But to me, this stop was more than just a popular tourist site or a chance to get a picture I missed out on 9 years ago: This meant that I had now visited both the Northernmost and Southernmost points of the contiguous United States in the same year! This was something that I thought would be cool to accomplish but wasn’t something I was going to force. Last year, I made it to both oceans, and this year I made it to the farthest north and south.
And speaking of retaking pictures from 2012, there was another stop we had to make:
When we came in 2012, we arrived by cruise ship, and we rented golf carts to get around the island. While we were stressfully driving everywhere looking for the court house in order to pay a parking ticket (long story), Audrey, who was 6 at the time, saw this tree that she wanted a picture with for some unknown reason. She started crying because we passed the tree and kept crying for a while after that. So we eventually turned around to get a picture of her with it.
Now, 9 years later, there was no way we would let her leave the island without retaking that picture! So we hunted it down, and it turns out this Kapok Tree is an iconic tree in Key West.
A couple other brief stops we made were the Key West Lighthouse and Ernest Hemingway’s House. We didn’t feel the need to go up the lighthouse since we did it in 2012, and the Hemingway House was very crowded, so we decided not to tour it as well. But one place we had to revisit was Kermit’s Key Lime Shoppe! Key lime pie is the most iconic dessert in Key West, and this is considered one of the best places to try it. They have several unique flavors of key lime pie here, including coconut, strawberry, and chocolate-dipped. I got coconut, which is really just regular key lime pie topped with coconut, but it was really good! And several of us got strawberry, which they said was very good as well. We had also tried the chocolate-dipped in 2012. There’s a nice outdoor seating area where we sat, and a quick rain storm passed through, so we stayed here under the awning to wait for the storm to pass.
Unfortunately, the rain didn’t seem to cool the weather down at all, and if anything, it made it worse because it was now very humid. We decided to walk down to the Mel Fisher Maritime Museum, which was maybe a 10-minute walk away (which felt like forever in this heat/humidity). And by the time we reached it, we were all ready for some A/C. Christian and Morgan decided not to visit the museum with the rest of us. I considered skipping out as well, but the A/C just felt so good, so I decided to stay. This museum displays a lot of treasure recovered from sunken Spanish ships throughout the Florida Keys. It was definitely a cool stop to make. We spent maybe an hour here in the museum before walking around and exploring the island a bit. After visiting a lot of souvenir shops and walking around the docks (where we saw another manatee and a nurse shark), we headed back to the car. From there, Morgan wanted to check out the farmer’s market, so we headed down there.
The farmer’s market was a nice stop, and we were able to sample a lot of cool foods there. It’s a nice place to check out, but it’s only open on Thursday afternoons, so you have to be there at the right time. From there, we headed back to Big Pine Key to relax at the RV before getting dinner. Our final dinner in Key West was at Kiki’s Sand Bar, located right on the water in Big Pine Key. It’s a great place to visit, and I definitely recommend it! There’s live music and a pier to walk out on where we saw another nurse shark. The food here was great too, and it was a nice, relaxing atmosphere for us to enjoy our last night together on this long roadtrip across the Overseas Highway.
The following morning, I woke up extremely early, and Logan drove me into Key West to drop me off there at the docks. The rest of the family headed back home, but I stayed behind because there was one last national park in South Florida that I needed to visit before I could leave: Dry Tortugas! Dry Tortugas is an island group and national park located 70 miles from Key West that is only accessible by boat or seaplane. To get there is very expensive, so the rest of the family understandably didn’t want to go with me. But since I’m on a mission to visit as many national parks as possible, a stop here was a necessity, and I had actually booked my ferry ride back in March due to how fast it sells out. The journey to Dry Tortugas is dangerous to attempt alone because of the shallow seabed littered with coral reefs and old shipwrecks. So unless you want to pay for a seaplane ride out there, the only safe option is to go by boat with a professional. Some fishing charters will take tourists out there, but the easiest way is by taking the Yankee Freedom III ferry.
I boarded the ferry, which was packed at maximum capacity, and we started the 70-mile ride out to Dry Tortugas. The ride there was exciting as we crossed through bright blue waters with flying fish skipping across the top in order to avoid the boat. It was a relaxing trip that took about 2 hours because of how far we were going. But finally an island popped up in the distance, and then the fort appeared, and we made our way to Garden Key. The most prominent feature of the park is Fort Jefferson. This was built by the US military back in the 1800s in order to protect the coast of Florida from pirates and other enemies. But construction was halted during the Civil War where it became a prison for those that turned on the North.
The most famous prisoner to be sentenced to Fort Jefferson was Dr Samuel Mudd. He treated John Wilkes Booth’s injuries immediately after he had killed Abraham Lincoln. While it’s unclear if Mudd knew what Booth had just done, he was given a life sentence at Dry Tortugas for doing his job because of suspicion that he was in on the assassination. Years later, the yellow fever epidemic started wiping out the prison population at the fort, and Dr Mudd worked tirelessly to treat those who were sick. He was eventually pardoned for his work at the prison. Once the epidemic took out most of the prisoners, construction of the fort ended for good, and it was abandoned until the National Park Service took over many years later. At the time construction started, this would have been the most advanced military fort in the world, but by the time it was abandoned, technology had advanced so much that it would have been unable to defend itself. Though never completed, it is still considered the largest brick structure in all of the Americas. And the majority of its estimated 16 million bricks came from a Pensacola company, giving this fort an interesting connection to my home town.
This remote island originally got its name because of how inhospitable it is. There is no source of fresh water available on the island, and rain is somewhat rare compared to the rest of the Keys. It was discovered by Ponce de León who found many turtles here. He called it “Tortugas” but then others later added the word “Dry” so explorers knew to avoid the island at all costs as it would be impossible to survive here for any length of time. I had originally wanted to camp here overnight, but when I called to get a reservation back in March, it had already been fully booked through September. (The ferry only takes so many campers each day, but I guess I could’ve hired someone to take me out here if I really wanted to).
I explored the whole island and then attempted to snorkel, but the snorkeling didn’t really go as planned as I was having difficulties with my mask. But it was a very enjoyable day overall. I was worried that the crowds would be impossible to avoid, but the fort is big enough that I felt somewhat alone for most of the day which I was very thankful for. It allowed me to explore it at my own pace without feeling rushed to get out of someone’s way. I spent the whole day there at Dry Tortugas before catching the ferry back to Key West. Once there, I walked around Duval Street for a bit before catching an Uber to the airport to make it back home. Overall this was a great trip where I was able to visit all three of Florida’s national parks and make some great memories with family. If you want to see the video I made of the trip, you can click here, and I’ll be sharing more about this trip over the next couple weeks with some travel guides. I hope you enjoyed these stories from the southernmost point, and thanks for reading!
Tyler's Travels 