Getting There

Let's talk about getting there.

Like I said, it really is half the fun.  So how DO you get there, anyway?  Chances are, you've flown into Miami, or maybe Fort Lauderdale and rented yourself a car.  Or maybe you've driven from Orlando, or the Gulf Coast, or if you're like me the first time, you've driven all the way down from Maryland.  No matter how you did it, sooner or later you're going to end up on the Homestead Extension of Florida's Turnpike hurtling south from Miami.  Past subdivisions full of red clay tile rooves, one story stucco houses and cross streets with enticing names like Caribbean Boulevard.

This is Hurricane Andrew country.  The first time I made this trip was in the summer of 1993 - much of this area has been either built or rebuilt since that time as it was mostly devastated by Andrew in 1992.  That Home Depot you see on the right and the strip shopping centers all over the place?  The good ones "only" lost their rooves.  Many were flattened.  Much of the growth here is new too, as a lot of the trees were taken away in the storm, too.

For me, this is where the anticipation starts to build, because you're finally leaving the influence of Miami behind and entering the no-man's-land that is Homestead and Florida City.  Too far south to be Miami, but too far north to be the Keys.  Billboards abound for places in Key Largo - and if it hasn't sunk in yet that you're off to someplace exotic and exciting, it will right about here.  The turnpike hangs on for the last couple of miles before crossing over Dixie Highway and dumping you out rather unceremoniously on US-1.  Almost immediately you'll be greeted with a great big sign over the road for Biscayne, Everglades and Key West.


What the sign really says, though, is more like "This is it, pal.  Last warning.  The end of civilization as you know it."  Should you make a left, and by all means you SHOULD make time to at some point, you'll end up at Biscayne.  A right will eventually take you to Florida 9336, into Everglades National Park, and ultimately to another end-of-the-road town at Flamingo, past about 40 miles of swampy scenery every bit as beautiful as that in the Keys, albeit for different reasons.  Make the time to go there sometime too.  Maybe I'll talk about that some day too.

But for now, that's not why you're here.  Go straight through the intersection and through the last mile or so of businesses clinging to the end of the mainland - Walgreens.  Holiday Inn Express. Starbucks.  Wendy's.  Burger King.  Long John Silver's, although why you'd eat fast-food seafood here is puzzling, at best.  Best Western ("Gateway to the Keys!")  The Shell station ominously warning you that this is your last gas before the Keys.  The even more ominous Last Chance Saloon, but "only for friendly people". (And "Now with indoor toilets!").

You've got a decision to make here.  Actually, there's only one way worth going any more, and that's making the next left down Card Sound Road, and we'll talk more about that another time.  But what if you WERE to go straight?

Straight ahead of you is the infamous "18-mile stretch".  Actually, it used to be a lot more infamous than it is now.  When I first started coming this way, before I discovered the magic that is Card Sound Road, the 18-mile stretch had a well-deserved reputation for being a harrowing experience.  The turquoise divider and walls you see now were not there.  This was 18 miles of two-lane road with lots of trucks, boats on trailers, motorcycles, bikes all jockeying for position and anxiously awaiting the next passing zone.

Every so often there would be a passing zone and a massive repositioning would take place.  These passing zones would be foretold by a series of signs, arranged Burma-Shave style on the side of the road a few seconds apart like this:

Patience Pays

Next

Passing

Zone

Only

2 Miles

But inevitably, there were always those that couldn't wait and over the yellow line they went, sometimes with catastrophic results closing the road for HOURS at a time while people and vehicles were hauled out of roadside canals and mangrove swamps.

Assuming you survived the stretch, you'd emerge at the Jewfish Creek bridge.  A small, low drawbridge connecting the mainland to Key Largo.  The drawbridge is gone today, replaced by a high-level monstrosity over Jewfish Creek (itself part of the intracoastal waterway) which dwarfs the marina and Gilbert's way down below you.  The bridge, itself, is mostly turquoise too, as if making it the color of the water that is all around you will somehow make it less visible.  Right after Jewfish Creek, you'll go over Lake Surprise - allegedly named because it came as a complete surprise to the builders of the Overseas Railroad (of which MUCH more later!) and took most of 1906 to bridge.

Soon after, the road will turn right and dump you smack in the middle of Key Largo.  But you're not going to go this way anyway, and we'll talk about why not tomorrow.