Dry Tortugas

We’re big fans of national parks. And while we’re not on a quest to visit every single one, we do generally stop at any national park in our vicinity. That made Dry Tortugas National Park a tough call. It’s not really in anybody’s vicinity.

The park is on a key about 70 miles west of Key West. You can only get there by boat or plane, and both are fairly pricey. But we had heard great things about the trip out there so we decided to splurge and book a boat trip. 

The high speed catamaran leaves Key West at 8 am, and since we had to check in around 7 a.m., we had to leave Bahia Honda at 6 am. If that wasn’t painful enough, there’s no free parking in Key West, so we had to leave the truck in a parking garage for $40 for the day.

The boat ride was uneventful. They give you a bagel and cream cheese for breakfast with free coffee and tea. I stopped drinking coffee years ago, but a warm cup of coffee seemed like a wise choice that early morning.

The trip takes about 2.5 hours each way. To kill time, we tried to figure out how many of the 63 national parks we had visited. It was tough without a complete list but we came up with about 30 including Dry Tortugas. We later confirmed it was 31, with another 18 new parks on the schedule for this year. New River Gorge is a bit of a conundrum. Mr. 123 visited the gorge before it was a national park. Does that count? Mrs. 123 says no, and since she hasn’t been there, we’ll leave it unchecked for now.

Dry Tortugas consists of seven remote islands nestled among coral reefs and white sandy beaches, and about 100 square miles of water. It’s called Tortugas because the Spaniards who first charted the islands noted the abundance of turtles, or tortugas in Spanish. By the time many of the Spanish ships reached the area, their food had turned stale or rotten, so an ample supply of fresh turtle meat was a welcome find. British sailors later added the “Dry” to indicate there wasn’t any fresh water there.

On the boat tour, you only get to visit Garden Key which hosts Fort Jefferson, one of the country’s largest and best preserved 19th century forts. Built to protect one of the most strategic deepwater anchorages in North America, the fort provided a resupply point for ships patrolling the Gulf of Mexico and the Straits of Florida. Although ships could pass clear of the fort’s cannons, they could not avoid the warships that anchored there.

The fort was built over a period of 30 years, from 1846 to 1875, but was never fully completed nor fully armed. It was never attacked, but helped fulfill its role nonetheless. During the Civil War, Union warships docked there as they implemented a blockade of Southern shipping. The fort also housed prisoners, mainly union deserters.

Its most famous prisoner was Dr. Samuel Mudd, the doctor who set the broken leg of John Wilkes Booth after Booth shot President Abraham Lincoln. Booth ultimately regained his freedom by helping care for prisoners and guards who had contracted yellow fever. Depending on which way the wind and ocean currents are flowing, the island is also a target of Cuban refugees. If they can set foot on land, they can stay in the U.S. The fort displays one of the rickety boats in which Cubans arrived there seeking freedom.

Soon after we arrived, our guide led a tour of the fort, where he explained how and why the fort was built, and what life was like for the soldiers stationed there. Then we grabbed some sandwiches from the boat and had our lunch on picnic tables just outside the fort’s moat.

After lunch, we decided to forgo further exploration of the fort and do some snorkeling. The park sits at the southwest corner of the third largest reef system in the world. Because of its remote location and the gulf current flowing south of the park, there’s an abundance of marine life here, more so than in most places in the Florida Keys.

We chose to snorkel among the pilings leftover from the piers build by the U.S. Navy to refuel ships with coal in the late 1800s. The piers were destroyed by a hurricane and the Navy opted not to rebuild them. Now they provide shelter for large grouper, tarpon, barracudas and even sharks. I’m not sure we saw any of those, but we did see plenty of colorful fish.

Unfortunately, time in the park is limited. We had to reboard the boat at 2:30 p.m., just four hours after we had arrived. The only way to stay longer is to camp out on the island, but that’s a more expensive proposition.

On the return trip, we chatted up a couple who were vacationing in the Keys. He was a hospital finance guy, but Mr. 123, newly retired from health journalism, resisted peppering him for story ideas. With cold beers and good conversation, the trip back passed quickly.

We arrived in Key West about a half hour before sunset, so we made our way over to Sunset Pier to catch the legendary view. The pier is essentially a long bar with stools set up so people can watch the sunset with drink in hand.

Since it was Friday night, we walked through Mallory Square to see some of the street performers. But it had been a long day so we quickly headed back to the car and returned to our campsite.

I don’t know that we’d ever go back to Dry Tortugas, given the cost. Perhaps if we win the lottery, we’ll come back and camp out there for a few days. Once the tour boat leaves, I’m sure having the island pretty much to yourself would be a spectacular experience. The stargazing alone might be worth the price of admission.