Growing up in Jacksonville, “the Keys” always felt like a different state wearing Florida’s name. It took moving three thousand miles away and flying back for a trip to finally make the drive down myself, and I spent most of it wondering why I waited so long.
The drive alone is worth the trip. Route 1 strings the islands together over a series of bridges with water on both sides for most of it, turquoise and impossibly clear in a way that doesn’t look real even when you’re looking right at it. I stopped constantly, which apparently everyone does, because the pullouts were never empty.
Islamorada was my favorite stop, quieter than Key West and built entirely around the water. I went snorkeling for the first time in years off a reef that was close enough to shore that I didn’t need to fully commit to a boat trip, and saw more fish in twenty minutes than I expected to see the whole day. Key West itself was livelier, sunset at Mallory Square with a crowd that somehow didn’t feel annoying, a conch fritter from a stand I picked purely because the line was long, and a slow walk through Old Town in the evening once the heat let up.
It didn’t feel like the Florida I grew up with at all, less strip malls, more genuine slow-down, and I came home with a real case for going back that had nothing to do with nostalgia and everything to do with just wanting more time on that water.
