The Overseas Highway runs 113 miles along the Florida Keys, from Key Largo south to Key West. This was the one thing my husband wanted to do in the Keys and the thing I probably researched the most. I had read dozens of ideas of places to stop and things to do along the way and after much debate narrowed it down to 8 potential activities. We only did 3 of them (and 2 of them begrudgingly). But such is the nature of a road trip with tired kids and competing interests.
Much like Key Largo itself, my expectations of the Overseas Highway were very different from reality. On numerous “most scenic drives in America” lists, I had high expectations for this drive. Sort of piggybacking off my vision of cute island towns on each key, I envisioned stunning scenery from start to finish in between each of them. But much like there were old strip malls in place of cute towns, there were old strip malls in place of scenic viewpoints for much of the drive.
Now don’t get me wrong, there were openings between the strip malls that had some beautiful views, especially as we crossed bridges from island to island. And my biggest disappointment of the entire trip was that we did not drive across the Seven Mile Bridge, but I was soundly out voted on that one. But while we admittedly didn’t do the trip justice by stopping short of the bridge, we did still spend over 4 hours on the route (with various stops along the way), and I was really underwhelmed. There were pretty stretches, but they were much less frequent than the stretches that felt like Route 35 in New Jersey.
The main attraction on our drive was a stop at Robbie’s Marina to feed the tarpon. That was so much fun and I’m sure JB would tell you that the drive down to the keys was worth it just for that. After that, we ate lunch in Marathon before turning around.
One of the scenic stops we did make was a little beach parking area in Islamorada. There was a boardwalk that ran parallel to the beach and lots of little openings in the brush to walk out onto little beaches. We found a great spot with a really cool tree stump and hung out there for a while. The different shades or greens and blues in the water was stunning.
We made two other touristy stops along the way back. First we stopped at Rain Barrel Village, a hip little collection of shops and art galleries. Betsy the Lobster – the 30 foot tall, 40 foot long lobster – greeted us in the parking lot. The main store that you walk through was a bit of a tourist trap, with some unique art pieces hidden amongst mainly cheap souvenirs. I was worried that I had dragged us all out of the car for a typical souvenir shop but when you walk through the store and come out the other side, there is a whole little village of adorable shops back there.
We really enjoyed wandering around in the shops, checking out some local artists and even watching a glassblower in action. It was a really unique place and so interesting to explore.
And finally, you can’t come to the Florida Keys without getting key lime pie! We stopped at the Blond Giraffe, an amazing key lime pie “factory”. It did not disappoint. We ended up going through the longish line twice because the boys, who swore up and down that they didn’t like key lime pie, took one bite of ours and had to have their own. It was incredible. And it had a super cute patio area out back where you could relax and enjoy your treat.
All in all we had an enjoyable drive down the Overseas Highway. But it was completely different than I expected. I thought I would be wowed by the scenery from start to finish but instead the highlights for us were the more touristy stops. The views from the bridges were really pretty but that was a small portion of the overall drive, which was mostly a busy one lane highway out of sight of the water and dominated by run-down strip malls and traffic lights.
