Rahawa Haile grew up surrounded by the beauty and kitsch of South Florida. Now she returns and wonders what happens when the places we love start to disappear.
The Dry Tortugas is a national park in the Guld of Mexico made up of seven small islands 70 miles off the coast of Key West. Photos by Rose Marie Cromwell.
Hot, humid air, like a weighted blanket, draped itself around me as I exited Miami International Airport. As a native Miamian who now lives on the opposite side of the country, I live for this sensation. It's something I crave when I've been away too long, though my northern friends can't fathom why. One of the reasons South Florida feels like home to those born here is that nowhere else in the country quite feels like South Florida. It's the only stretch of the contiguous United States that sits in the tropical climate zone.
When I was a kid growing up here in the early '90s, I spent my weeks in with my nose buried in one book or another. But weekends were spent far from the city center with my father, paddling through the Everglades or, more frequently, road-tripping through the —the 44 islands connected by 42 bridges, stretching 113 miles from Key Largo to Key West.
The islands are among the most vulnerable to climate change, and I had never seen them. To put it bluntly: If I ever wanted to visit, now was the time.
I've revisited the Keys frequently over the years, first as a teenager with an eye for adventure and later as an adult desperate for a soft place to unplug from the world. Yet two years had passed since I'd been back, and I wanted to come to terms with what Hurricane Irma had wrought when it pummeled the fragile island chain in 2017. I also wanted to camp in the more distant , a national park in the Gulf of Mexico made up of seven small islands 70 miles off the coast of Key West. The islands are among the most vulnerable to climate change, and I had never seen them. To put it bluntly: If I ever wanted to visit, now was the time.
Road-tripping through the Florida Keys offers plenty of opportunities to indulge in a slice of key lime pie.
For Miamians, a trip to the Keys starts where the Ronald Reagan Turnpike dead-ends into the South Dixie Highway, which itself ceases to exist once it hits the Miami-Dade County line near Manatee Creek. From there on out, you are on the southernmost stretch of U.S. Highway 1, known as the Overseas Highway. With Miami in the rearview, the twin seas of blue sky and ocean ahead throw the islands of the Keys, a mix of limestone and luck, into sharp relief.
Just south of Florida City, my father and I would often opt for the Card Sound Road instead of U.S. 1 as our path for leaving the mainland, driving needless extra miles sandwiched between aisles of mangroves bowed in brackish water, the air thick with the scent of decaying vegetation. All this in order to have a soda and a chat with locals at the divey shack-on-the-water 's before cruising over one of South Florida's least traveled bridges, Card Sound Bridge. As we'd cross, I'd lean my head out the window until the sea air stung my eyes, my senses alive with the dizzying brilliance of home. Later, we'd snorkel with angelfish and snapper at before heading to , three miles down the road, where we licked the salt from our lips before filling up on fish (dad) and key lime pie (me). Now, as I eased onto Card Sound Road, I felt welcomed home.
You could drive nonstop from Miami to Key West in three to four hours, but it's better to take your time. Weird things happen on Florida's fringes, and the Overseas Highway travels through some of the weirdest.
In Key Largo, the first key you encounter on the journey south, you can snorkel past a massive statue of Jesus called Christ of the Abyss. Or stay at an underwater hotel named after . Or ride the —yes, the cinematic steamboat that carried Hepburn and Bogart. A few keys south, in the village of , you can take a snack break while sunburned tourists crouch on their hands and knees on a dock to feed the fish at . Eager, gigantic tarpon leap out of the water toward a blanket of quivering bait dangling from visitors' hands.
