Bucket List - Overseas Highway

Once in a while you may have an opportunity to accomplish something on your bucket list. I hope everyone at least HAS a bucket list; mine is on my IPhone in “Notes”. We checked off one of mine this year when we visited the Florida Keys. My bucket-list goal was to drive US Route 1, the Overseas Highway with causeways and bridges that connect Miami to Key West. Although we didn’t do that exactly, the trip we made on Pearl, on the buses, in a taxi, in a car, and walking definitely counts as fulfilling that wish. 

I’m reading the book “Last Train to Paradise” by Les Standiford, about Henry Flagler’s efforts in the early 1900s to build a railroad to Key West. He had already built a railroad from Jacksonville to Miami, and it was his goal to extend the line all the way to Key West before he died. He accomplished this, but over time, the rails were destroyed by four hurricanes. He envisioned Key West not only as a tourist destination, but also as a major US shipping harbor, with a deep-water port and excellent rail service for transporting the imported goods to the mainland. But times changed and all of that didn’t work out, but the current Overseas Highway is built in many places on that old rail-bed.

But anyway, my Bucket List goal was to drive that road, from one end to the other. Instead we entered the Keys right in the middle near Marathon. We entered from Florida Bay in the Gulf of Mexico, passed through the old railroad bridge and under the Seven Mile Bridge into Boot Key at mm 48. We moored at the Boot Key City Marina for several days.

The Keys did not make a good first impression – just a clunky mooring field with a big, dry highway passing by. But they got better each day we were there. We took the local bus one mile north to Marathon and walked around the Crane Point Nature Center (mm 50), learning how to make a “tabby” house and learning about the mangroves that are responsible for creating, enlarging, filtering and maintaining the islands/keys in this region. We walked to the Publix and took a brief taxi ride back to the boat.

The next day, we again took the local bus to Key West (mm 0), a trip of about two hours. We explored the town, touched the Atlantic at the most southerly point on the U.S. mainland (just 90 miles from Cuba), had drinks at Sloppy Joe’s (the bar where they were invented) and rode the bus back. Another day we saw Summerland Key (mm 25) from Chad and Nancy George’s car, really appreciating the ride so that we didn’t have to spend more hours on the bus.

We had outstanding seafood four times - fish tacos for lunch at Big Mouth Cafe in Marathon, peel-and-eat shrimp at a Boot Key bar, shrimp tacos for lunch at Garbo’s Grill, a food truck/restaurant in Key West, and a sample of everything during happy hour at Key Fisheries, an upstairs tiki bar on the Bayside near our Boot Key marina. Brian will have to come up with the name of that other place.

On Sunday, as we departed Boot Key, we headed back into Florida Bay on the Gulf. There are two sides of the Keys - Bayside and Oceanside. We traveled to Islamorada (mm 83) and stayed at a small marina. We took a walk along Route 1, an ugly highway just like all the other ugly yet useful highways we have seen in America. But then … we discovered Lorelei’s – another tiki bar, just off the highway, identified only by a gigantic mermaid sign. It is THE place to gather in Islamorada on a Sunday afternoon, to visit with friends, hang out in either the intense sun or the cool shade, eat seafood, drink cold drinks, listen to excellent guitarists, or just chill. This is what the Keys are all about, definitely, and you don’t have to drink a lot or, in fact, anything at all, to feel a part of it. I bought a flat basket that is woven from a single palm frond, dried and lacquered, made by HatMon. 

Finally we left the Keys, traveling “inside” where the waves were gentle, compared to the 7’ waves on the “outside” which our boat can handle, but we people can’t. That day, when we reached Dinner Key, I crossed “Drive the Overseas Highway” off of my Bucket List. Done.