Miami to Key West road trip: 20 stops worth the detour

Historic 1947 roadside landmark serving conch chowder, fresh fish, and turtle-shaped key lime pie in a beloved dining room. Order: Conch Chowder.

A short climbing trail up the remains of the 1912 Bahia Honda Bridge -- the hardest span Flagler's crews ever built, over the deepest channel in the Keys -- dead-ends in open air where a section was removed, with panoramic Atlantic-on-one-side, Gulf-on-the-other views and three beaches (widely called the best natural sand in the Keys) at its base.

Old-school waterfront tiki bar and grill tucked in a cove with live music and classic Keys seafood baskets. Order: Conch Fritters.

Megaliths one man carved & moved alone

A 63-acre wild hammock hides a bird-rehab hospital, Calusa and shipwreck-era pirate history, and the last known Bahamian-style pioneer house in the Keys, all a five-minute walk from US-1 -- genuinely the Middle Keys' deepest single stop for both nature and history in one ticket.

The largest undeveloped stretch of land left between Key Largo and Big Pine Key -- a 1.5-mile trail through a rare rockland hammock with one of the largest thatch-palm stands in the US ends at a bench overlooking the flat, silvery expanse of Florida Bay.

Six-plus miles of mostly paved, bike-and-wheelchair-accessible trail wind through one of the largest surviving tracts of West Indian tropical hardwood hammock left in the US -- a shady, buggy, genuinely wild counterpoint to the open-water bridge driving on either side of it, home to 84 protected species.

Family-run West Miami counter serving Miami's benchmark frita cubana for over 35 years, a spiced pork-beef patty crowned with shoestring potatoes. Order: Frita cubana with batido.

Kendall Peruvian rotisserie specializing in glistening pollo a la brasa by the half or whole bird with two sides and huancaina sauce. Order: Pollo a la brasa.

A 45-acre bayside park built around a shallow, manicured swimming beach on Florida Bay -- with a public pool, dog park, and marina thrown in -- gives road-trippers stopping in Islamorada a genuine break-the-drive stop that isn't a restaurant.

A 1,300-foot boardwalk through mangroves -- rebuilt after Hurricane Irma -- is named for a wheelchair-using local teacher who spent her life fighting Keys overdevelopment; today it leads to one of the only wave-free, kid-safe wading beaches on the whole Overseas Highway.

The legendary 1959 fruit stand on the road to the Ernest Coe entrance, blending key-lime and tropical-fruit milkshakes from its own groves. The single most traditional Everglades pre-park stop there is.

A restored Donald Ross course at the historic Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables, with the landmark tower as a backdrop. Classic, walkable South Florida golf.

A former quarry pit is now the largest body of freshwater in the entire Florida Keys -- and the covered observation platform 225 feet from the parking lot is the single best spot in the refuge to see a wild alligator, Key deer, turtles, and wading birds from one stop.

A funky Card Sound gateway stop for travelers easing into the Keys before the Overseas Highway turns fully blue-water.

A park that’s 95% water

a boardwalk among gators and wading birds

An Everglades airboat-country stop on the Tamiami Trail, useful when the crossing should feel like the swamp and not just a highway.