Helicopter from Miami to Islamorada

This village calls itself a fishing capital and the geography is the reason rather than the slogan. Shallow backcountry lies behind the islands, the drop into blue water lies in front of them, and both are minutes from the same dock. The flats hold tarpon, bonefish and permit, so parties book flats fishing for a morning and are back for lunch. Rods and gear travel, within the payload for the aircraft on the day. Offshore the Gulf Stream runs ten to twenty miles out with sailfish, mahi mahi and wahoo on it. An offshore morning and a backcountry afternoon fit inside one day here, but say which of the two you want when you send the date: they are rarely the same boat.

The ocean side is where the reef sits. Alligator Reef, with its iron lighthouse standing out of the water about four nautical miles off the shore, is the piece of it everybody photographs and the first stop the snorkel boats run to. The coral is shallow enough that snorkellers and divers are looking at the same thing from different depths, which is what makes half a day in the water work with a mixed party. The boats leave from the marinas along the bay side, so a morning on the reef and a long lunch ashore both fit inside one visit. The lighthouse itself has stood since 1873 and is the thing boats steer towards, which from the air makes it the marker you pick the island out by. Coming in over it is the moment most parties reach for a camera, so the approach and the afternoon get talked about afterwards as one thing.

The calmest version of the water here is the one at the dock. Tarpon of a hundred pounds and more hang under the boards on the bay side at mile marker seventy seven and a half, close enough to feed from the planks, which is the thing children remember about the Keys. The marine park on Windley Key is the other half of that afternoon. Neither needs a boat, a booking window or a tide, so they are what a day falls back on when the wind is up. It is also the cheapest hour of the day to fill and the easiest to move, so it is what a morning turns into when the boat is late or the tide is wrong. Nothing here needs to be booked ahead.

Behind the islands the bay dries into open sand at low water, warm and shin deep, with nothing on it and nothing around it. From the air on the way in you can see which of them are out. 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 decides the hour rather than you, which is the one part of an Islamorada day set by the sea and not by the aircraft. It is worth naming when you send the date, because it moves the afternoon by hours rather than by minutes.

The Keys are not a beach destination the way the mainland is, and this village is the exception that proves it. There is a boardwalk of three hundred feet over the sand on Lower Matecumbe with water that stays knee deep a long way out, and a park on Plantation Key with the pool, the marina and the shade. Everything else is strung along the one highway rather than gathered in a town: the resorts, the fish houses on the docks and the bars are minutes apart by car and nothing is far. Guests who want a table rather than a boat book a fly and dine day and ground transport is arranged with the flight rather than found on arrival. The bay side and the ocean side each have their own light, and the village is narrow enough that you can eat on one and watch the sun go down over the other on the same evening.

Two of the islands here have no road at all. Indian Key, a state historic site, carries the outline of a wrecking town that burned in 1840 and is now paths through the scrub with the foundations still readable. Lignumvitae Key, on the bay side, holds one of the last stands of the tropical hardwood hammock that once covered the upper Keys, with a house from the 1910s in the middle of it. Both are reached by boat only, both are quiet in a way the highway never is, and both are a short run from the marinas. Neither has a shop, a dock queue or a road, and both are close enough to the marinas that half a morning covers one of them. They are the part of an Islamorada day that most guests do not know is there until somebody puts it on the list.

On land the village keeps three things worth an hour. The fossil reef park on Windley Key is an old quarry whose cut walls are a cross section of a reef that grew here about a hundred thousand years ago, so you walk inside coral, not over it. The diving museum on the bay side at mile marker eighty three runs from open bottom helmets to the beginnings of sport diving. The hurricane monument on Upper Matecumbe, an art deco slab dedicated in 1937, marks the more than four hundred people killed by the Labor Day hurricane of 1935, most of them veterans building the highway. Anything outside the list goes to custom requests. All three sit within a few miles of each other on the one road, so they are what an afternoon turns into when the wind is up and the boats stay in. None needs a tide or a booking window.

Helicopter rides Miami Islamorada also work as the first leg rather than the whole day. The same aircraft carries on down the chain in the afternoon, which is the part parties tend to think of on the way home rather than on the way out. Marathon is the middle of the chain, Key West the end of it and Key Largo the first stop back towards the city. Two or three of them in one day is island hopping, and it only works because nobody is driving between them. The village itself is on the Islamorada destination page, the packaged version is the Islamorada getaway day trip and the rest of the chain is on the Florida Keys page.