National Parks and Recreation

I realized something important before visiting this park: we were officially a third of the way through our journey to visit all 63 National Parks! That is, of course, as long as they don’t keep adding more (which I’m obviously 100% on board with.) There were only 59 when we started, after all.

I know there’s a good chance we don’t make it to all 63 (it is EXPENSIVE to knock out some of those Alaska ones), but it’s still exciting to be making real progress!

So onto Biscayne! And our second trimester! Nope, not great. I’ll workshop it.

This is where things really started to go south (pun intended) on this trip. I woke up to an email from the Biscayne National Institute (who run all the excursions in the park) saying that our kayaking trip through the mangrove forest was canceled due to weather. We were…confused, to say the least.

It was gorgeous out.

We were going to go check out the area anyway, but we had to swing by the visitor center to get our refund. They told us the wind conditions weren’t ideal (I’m still stumped by this, it was a perfectly calm day from what we could tell) and that we could reschedule for a later time or date. We were heading to Key West that afternoon, though, and didn’t want to make the drive in the dark.

We were disappointed, but we knew we’d be back later in the week to take a boat ride to a different part of the park. So instead we just checked out the visitor center and did the walk along the boardwalk and jetty.

I was hoping to see some manatees, but was thwarted once again.

You’re just going to have to trust me when I say that Miami is out in the distance in the below picture. It was a pretty hazy day, but we could see it with the naked eye.

It was a nice walk. We saw a lot of little lizards running around and saw a couple larger iguanas hiding in the trees, but I couldn’t grab any good pictures of them.

From here, we took off for the Florida Keys, knowing we would be returning later in the week to do the other side of the park and boat out to Boca Chita Key. I’ll talk about our time driving down the keys and exploring Key West in another post, but it was pretty cool to spend some time on the Southernmost key and then drive back up to explore the Northernmost.

Elliot Key (also a part of Biscayne National Park) is technically the northernmost of the “true” Florida keys because it’s the last of the islands made from ancient exposed coral reef. However, there are two more keys just north of it, Sands Key and Boca Chita Key. Our boat tour brought us out to explore these two keys.

We met at Dinner Key Marina. Be careful when booking boat tours through the Institute and make sure you pay attention to what your departure point is. The different access points of the park are over an hour away from each other, with this port being in Miami proper.

We had this fellow waiting for us on the docks, and after a little bit of a wait for the previous tour to return, we were on our way out to Boca Chita.

But first, our boat popped into Elliot Key to take a little turn through a mangrove forest.

For those who don’t know, mangroves are these shrubs or trees that are able to grow and survive in saltwater and low-oxygen environments by absorbing or filtering out the salt. Their complicated root systems create a perfect shelter for fish and other marine life along the coast, but that’s just scratching the surface of how useful these plants can be. Their root systems protect against storm surges and they consume and store so much carbon dioxide that just one square mile of a mangrove forest is enough to offset the emissions of 90,000 cars! Pretty cool.

Plus, they’re just fascinating to look at. I was glad we got to see them up close, but we could only see so much from a boat on a cloudy day and it just made me more frustrated that our kayaking trip was cancelled because we were supposed to kayak right up to these on a bright sunny day and I can only imagine all the cool fish we would’ve gotten to see. Not to mention, I could just stare at the root systems for hours.

From there, we finally made our way to Boca Chita and were given an hour to explore the island.

Boca Chita fascinated me. It’s part of the national park, but it still acts like a private island. When we were there in December, it was still open to the public to dock for free any time. There are national park fees to camp on the grounds, but anyone could tie up their boat on a first-come first-served basis. Though as of January 1st, 2024, there is now a $25 docking fee on weekends and apparently it can become quite the party island once the park rangers go home. Just as it was originally intended.

The island was privately owned in the 1930s by industrialist Mark Honeywell. He and his wife used it as a party island and all their friends would head there from Miami after the work week.

He would even fire off the above cannon to welcome guests to the island. They built this lighthouse (which legally could not be lit because it was never cleared with the US Coast Guard and thus could become a navigational hazard), a chapel, a picnic pavilion and garage.

I’ve heard they open the observation deck of the lighthouse sometimes when park rangers are present, but that wasn’t offered to us when we were there, which was kind of a bummer. You know I love climbing things.

He also built this limestone wall along the length of the island, but a good portion of it was destroyed by Hurricane Andrew, the 1992 hurricane that wreaked havoc on the Florida Keys.

We had a lot of fun exploring the island. It’s only 3 football fields across at its widest.

It was nice to get away from all the boats and noise happening at the docks and find some peace and quiet at the beaches and in the woods on the hiking paths.

Then it was time for us to head back to the city, but not before making one more stop on the way: Stiltsville.

I was most excited to see Stiltsville. These structures also date back to the glory days of the 1930s when “Crawfish” Eddie Walker built the first shack, several miles off the coast of Miami. At its peak, there were 27 total structures in this village in the sea that were only accessible by water. These places were constantly being raided by the police for illegal drinking and gambling operations.

Because of how exposed these structures were, they didn’t last long. In fact, Hurricane Andrew knocked out the last of these original 27 structures back in ’92. Today, there are only seven remaining buildings, none of which were around during the peak.

In 1985, the state of Florida gave the land to the US government to be a part of Biscayne National Park. There’s now a trust in place that protects these remaining structures and helps upkeep them. They also control permits for visits to these buildings, but the day we were there, they were only being visited by a million birds.

After a long day on the ocean, we finally returned to the city and made a night of it!

I’d never been to Miami before, but I knew I wanted to check out Calle Ocho and the Little Havana district. Luckily, our AirBNB was close by so we set off with hungry bellies, not really sure where we were going. But we walked past Old’s Havana with a line out the door and decided to give it a try.

And it was such a vibe! We got seated right by the open window and a great Cuban band started playing right as we got our drinks. It was a lovely evening with some delicious mojitos, Cuba Libres and HUGE portions of Cuban food.

And that was Biscayne! Given how much of the park is underwater, I HIGHLY encourage you book some boat and kayak tours to truly see it all. And maybe give yourself an extra day in case of weather-related cancellations, because take it from us, that can happen…even in Miami…even in December.

However, this was just the beginning of our disappointment on this trip. Okay, I made that sound super dramatic, but anytime you go on a trip expecting to knock off 3 national parks and come back only having visited 2, you’re going to be pretty disappointed. Luckily, we had enough fun in Key West to make up for it.

But that’s for next time! Be well.