Helicopter from Miami to Big Pine Key

The National Key Deer Refuge runs to 8,542 acres across Big Pine Key and No Name Key, and it was created in 1957 for a single animal. The Key deer is the smallest subspecies of the North American white-tailed deer and it lives in the Lower Keys and nowhere else on earth. Hunting and lost habitat had pushed the population below fifty by the 1940s. Roughly eight hundred live here now and about three quarters of them on these two islands, which is why the deer cross gardens and stand at the roadside here the way they do nowhere else in Florida. The refuge asks nobody to feed them: a deer that stops being wary of people ends up under a car. None of it needs booking. It is a slow walk or a slow drive at either end of the day, which suits an aircraft that can put the afternoon on the island instead of on the highway.

Looe Key sits about six miles off Big Pine Key and Ramrod Key, and it is the reason divers know this part of the chain. It is a textbook spur and groove reef: coral fingers running seaward with white sand channels between them, in seven to thirty feet of water. It held its own federal protection before being folded into the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. The name comes from HMS Looe, a British frigate that went aground here in February 1744. The reef itself is worked from the island rather than from the air. Boats run out from the Lower Keys marinas. Say how many are swimming when you send the date, and say whether anyone is diving rather than snorkelling: a dive boat and a snorkel boat are not always the same boat.

If the day is about fish, this is one of the better addresses in the chain. Coupon Bight and the shallows around Newfound Harbor lie straight off the south side, and the backcountry opens out to the north, so both kinds of fishing start within minutes of the island. That is why parties book bonefishing and flats access or a full fishing day by air. Rods and gear travel, within the payload for the aircraft on the day.

Bahia Honda State Park is at mile marker 37, a few minutes east by road, and it is the beach the Lower Keys are known for. It covers 524 acres and has three separate beaches on it, which is unusual in a chain where most of the shoreline is rock or mangrove. The old Flagler railroad bridge still stands over the water at the end of it, and that is what most people photograph. The gate opens at eight in the morning and shuts at sundown, so it suits a day that leaves Miami early rather than late.

At low water the banks on the south side dry out into open sand with nothing on them, and that is where a boat afternoon usually finishes. That is where a beach picnic goes. Add water toys if the party wants the afternoon on the water rather than on the sand, or a dock pickup if a boat is meeting you. Low water sets the hour, not the one anybody would prefer. It is the one part of a day here decided by the sea rather than by the aircraft, and it is worth saying with the date: it moves the afternoon rather than the flight.

The Blue Hole is the only freshwater lake in the Florida Keys and there is nothing natural about it. It is a quarry, cut for rock when the Overseas Railroad and later the highway were built, and it filled with rainwater afterwards. It sits inside the refuge and it is where the wildlife drinks, so alligators, turtles, wading birds and the deer all turn up at the same edge of the water. The trails around it run through pine rockland, a habitat that survives in the Keys only here and on a handful of neighbouring islands. Parties who want a table rather than a trail book a fly and dine day. Anything outside the usual list goes to custom requests.

No Name Key is one bridge east and it is where the road runs out. The wooden bridge to it was taken out by the hurricane of 1948 and then by fire. The concrete one standing today only went in in 1967, so the island spent most of a century cut off from the rest of the chain. The pub at the end of the road goes back to 1931, when it was a general store and a bait and tackle shop. It is the one address on these two islands everybody names, and the deer walk past the car park while you eat.

Helicopter rides Miami Big Pine Key also work as one leg rather than the whole day. The same aircraft carries on west to Key West and the Dry Tortugas, or back east to Marathon. Just west of here, Little Palm Island lies off Little Torch Key and is reached by water rather than by road. That is what turns one island into island hopping. An overnight changes the baggage rather than the route. The Big Pine Key destination page sets out the island itself, and the Big Pine Key getaway day trip is the same hours put together as one booking.