Lower Keys Day Trip: Bahia Honda State Park & the National Key Deer Refuge

If you have a rental car for a day (or are driving down from Miami along the Overseas Highway), do not drive past Mile Markers 30 to 37 in the Lower Keys. Just 55 kilometres (45 minutes north of Key West on US-1) sit the finest natural sandy beaches in the Florida Keys and an endangered species of miniature deer found nowhere else on Earth.

1. Bahia Honda State Park (Mile Marker 37, Open Morning to Sunset)

Unlike other Keys islands where limestone rock edges the water (compare Key West's island beaches), ocean currents deposit deep, soft white sand along both shores of 524-acre Bahia Honda Key, giving you three beaches inside one park for a small vehicle fee:

1. Calusa Beach (Gulf Side, Beneath the 1912 Bridge): sheltered from wind with shallow turquoise water and Henry Flagler's 1912 Old Bahia Honda Steel Truss Bridge rising overhead.
2. Walk Up Onto the Old Bahia Honda Bridge Trail: climb the short hill behind the nature centre onto the deck of the 1912 Railway and Highway Bridge up to the gap where a span was removed for boats, looking straight down at spotted eagle rays, nurse sharks and tarpon.
3. Sandspur Beach & Loggerhead Beach (Atlantic Side): walk out at low tide onto the wide Loggerhead Sandbar in ankle-deep water, or join the marina's boat trip to Looe Key Coral Reef.

2. Spotting Miniature Key Deer on Big Pine Key & No Name Key (Mile Marker 30)

Ten minutes closer to Key West at Mile Marker 30.5 on Big Pine Key, turn north onto Key Deer Boulevard (Route 940) into the complimentary National Key Deer Refuge. Isolated since the last Ice Age, the endangered Florida Key Deer evolved to the size of a medium dog. Drive slowly out to the Blue Hole quarry lake and across onto wooded No Name Key in the two hours before sunset or early morning to see gentle Key Deer browsing along the roadside. Federal law forbids feeding or touching them.