Epic Travel → North America → The South → Florida → Key West → Fort Jefferson

♦ Intrepid Top Pick!

Location: Dry Tortugas National Park, Florida

Time Required: One day

Red Tape/Notes: Travel on the Yankee Freedom ferry is $175 per adult and includes the $10 National Park Admission fee, as well as breakfast, lunch, and snorkeling equipment. Check in for the ferry is at 7am, and it arrives back in Key West at 5:15pm. Visit their website for additional details on the ferry. You can also travel there by seaplane for around twice the price – visit the Key West Seaplane Adventures website for more information. For more information on the Dry Tortugas National Park in general, visit the national park website.

What’s Nearby?: Shipwreck Treasures Museum, Hemingway Home, Kayaking, Snorkeling

The Dry Tortugas may be the US’s least visited National Park, but that isn’t because it’s a crappy park. It’s just hard to get here. People lucky enough to have a boat that they can bring down here have the joy of some amazing, pristine waters to swim, dive, fish, and generally enjoy. The rest of us are relegated to hopping on a ferry (or catamaran or sea plane) from Key West to Fort Jefferson, the only significant “attraction” in the Dry Tortugas. But what a cool place! The US never finished the construction of Fort Jefferson, a massive hexagonal fortress complete with a large moat, but it’s still the largest brick masonry structure in the US, and the third largest fort. The fort covers most of Garden Key, which is the second largest island in the Dry Tortugas. It ended up being used mainly as a prison, and housed 4 of the conspirators in the Lincoln assassination, including Dr. Samuel Mudd. If you have time after finishing your exploration of the fort, you can check out the rest of the island, though there isn’t anything particularly notable to mention (aside from a large quantity and variety of birds – if you’re into birds, the Dry Tortugas will be like a little heaven for you).

Epic Travel → North America → The South → Florida → Key West → Fort Jefferson