Road trip guide
Island-hopping down US-1 — a coral reef state park, sea turtles, the Seven Mile Bridge, tiny Key deer, and sunset at Mallory Square.
Estimate your fuel cost for this drive →
Hear a stop
This is how Wanderply narrates every stop of your trip — the audio a Trip Pass saves to your phone for offline drives. See pricing
Narrated tour
7 narrated stops · ~8 mins of audio · plays offline once saved
One payment, yours for good — no subscription. Or get every tour + your own trips narrated with Pro.
The Overseas Highway is the closest thing America has to a road across the sea. From Florida City, US-1 hops roughly 113 miles down a chain of coral islands on dozens of bridges to Key West, with turquoise shallows on one side and the Atlantic on the other. Much of it follows the bed of Henry Flagler's Overseas Railroad, finished in 1912 and wrecked by the 1935 Labor Day hurricane; the highway took over its bridges and opened in 1938.
Addresses here are given by mile marker, from MM 127 near Florida City to MM 0 in Key West, and this guide uses them too. Do it in three days and you'll have time to snorkel a reef, meet a rehabilitating sea turtle, and still make Mallory Square for sunset. Let Wanderply build your version and narrate each key as you cross it.
The route
At MM 102.5 in Key Largo, the first undersea park in the United States, protecting a stretch of the only living coral barrier reef in the continental US. Take a snorkel trip or glass-bottom boat out to the reef — tours run several times a day, weather permitting — or paddle the mangrove trails. Per-vehicle state park fee. Half a day.
A string of keys between roughly MM 90 and MM 70 that calls itself the Sport Fishing Capital of the World. At Robbie's (MM 77.5) you can buy a bucket of baitfish and hand-feed the huge tarpon circling the docks, then stop at the History of Diving Museum. Plenty of waterfront seafood for lunch.
In Marathon at MM 48.5, a working sea turtle hospital opened in 1986 that rescues, treats, and releases injured turtles. Guided tours visit the treatment area and the rehabilitation tanks where patients recover. Tours are ticketed and sell out — book ahead. About 90 minutes.
The current Seven Mile Bridge, opened in 1982, runs just under seven miles between Marathon and the Lower Keys. Beside it, a restored 2.2-mile stretch of the old Flagler-era bridge is open to walkers and cyclists out to Pigeon Key, a tiny island that housed the railroad's construction workers. Check access and tour times before you go.
At MM 37, the Keys' most celebrated beaches — real sand, clear shallow water, and good snorkeling — on an island where the Keys turn from coral rock to sand. A section of the old Bahia Honda Rail Bridge, with the highway once carried on top of its steel trusses, stands over the channel. Per-vehicle state park fee; parking fills on weekends. 2–3 hours.
Home of the endangered Key deer, the smallest subspecies of white-tailed deer, about the size of a large dog. Look for them at dawn and dusk on No Name Key and around the Blue Hole, an old rock quarry now filled with fresh water. Speed limits drop at night and are strictly enforced; feeding the deer is illegal. 1 hour.
The end of the road. Every evening crowds gather at Mallory Square for the sunset celebration of street performers. By day: the Southernmost Point buoy (90 miles to Cuba, as it says), the Ernest Hemingway Home with its six-toed cats, Duval Street, and seafood on the docks. The Dry Tortugas, 70 miles west, are reachable by ferry or seaplane — book well ahead.
Suggested plan
Day 1
Leave Miami early to beat the traffic onto US-1. Snorkel or glass-bottom boat at John Pennekamp, then on to Islamorada for tarpon at Robbie's and dinner on the water. Overnight in Islamorada.
Day 2
Morning tour at the Turtle Hospital, a walk or bike out the Old Seven Mile Bridge, then drive the new bridge to Bahia Honda for the beach. Look for Key deer around Big Pine Key at dusk, then continue to Key West.
Day 3
The Hemingway Home, the Southernmost Point, lunch on the docks, and sunset at Mallory Square. Add a day for a Dry Tortugas trip, or drive back to Miami (about 4 hours).
Wanderply doesn't just plan the Miami → Key West route — it narrates every stop like a podcast you play in the car, with the history and the story of each place. And it all works offline, the whole way.
Build this trip & hear it →Loading typical conditions in Key West…
Some links are affiliate links — booking through them supports Wanderply at no extra cost to you.
Good to know
About 165 miles and 3.5–4 hours without stops, though weekend and holiday traffic on the two-lane stretches can add an hour or more. The Overseas Highway itself (US-1) is toll-free; if you use Florida's Turnpike out of Miami, it has tolls, and the alternate Card Sound Road has a small toll.
Small green signs along US-1 count down from about MM 127 near Florida City to MM 0 in Key West, and locals give addresses by them — 'MM 77.5, bayside.' 'Bayside' means the Gulf/Florida Bay side of the road; 'oceanside' means the Atlantic side.
Florida state parks such as John Pennekamp and Bahia Honda charge per-vehicle entry fees plus a small per-person amount; snorkel and boat tours are extra. The Turtle Hospital and the Hemingway Home charge admission. Dry Tortugas National Park's entrance fee is usually added to the ferry or seaplane ticket.
December through April brings dry, mild weather — and the highest prices and heaviest traffic. Summer is hot, humid, and quieter. Hurricane season runs June 1 to November 30, peaking August through October; if you travel then, watch forecasts closely and know that evacuation orders cover the whole island chain.
Yes — from your car or at a respectful distance, at dawn or dusk on Big Pine and No Name keys. Drive slowly: speed limits on Big Pine Key drop at night because vehicle strikes are a leading cause of Key deer deaths. Feeding them is illegal and harms them.
Tell Wanderply your dates, pace, and who's coming — it builds a day-by-day plan around your must-dos and narrates the whole drive.
Plan your Miami → Key West tripWanderply Road Notes
New hand-written road-trip guides like this one, plus the odd planning tip — at most two emails a month.
AI assistant · a person on the team can step in
Loading the chat…
AI replies can be wrong — a person reviews anything about billing or your account. Please don't share passwords or card numbers.
