We woke up early and decided to head out for the Keys after breakfast. The rental car agent had told us that it will take us about 5-6 hours to drive down to Key West. Since we were staying the next two nights in Fort Lauderdale, we didn’t know if we would go all the way there because the round-trip drive alone would take the whole day. We decided to get to some point midway, spend the day and return back.
The drive is pretty interesting. You get through many stretches of single lane road where there is water on both sides. There are several tolls along the way. The car came equipped with the e-toll device and we didn’t have to carry any change or stop along the way.
Our first stop was at Anne’s Beach. The beach is located right by mile-marker 73 on Hwy 1. There are 2 parking lots.
There were almost no waves on the beach while we were there. After reading online reviews, we already knew that the beaches in the Keys are not typical beautiful beaches. The water was shallow for a very long distance and there was sea-grass all around.
We walked along the cove and saw a few cabanas ideal for bringing picnic and spending a day at the beach. We spent about an hour here. It started to drizzle and we decided that we didn’t want to spend the whole day driving and decided to head back to Fort Lauderdale and go to a proper beach instead.
By the time we returned to Fort Lauderdale, the weather had cleared up, so we decided to go to John Lloyd State Park Beach next. Park entrance is $6 and there is plenty of parking available. Between the parking lot and the beach there is picnic areas, where multiple families were bbqing.
One great thing about this beach was that there were plenty of changing rooms and restrooms all along the beach. It looked like they were kept in good running condition too. So although the beach itself was not that outstanding compared to many other beaches in the area, I still liked it a lot because of the availability and the condition of the facilities.
After changing, we went straight to the water.
We stayed in the water for close to 2 hours but it was nearing closing time for the park and we had to leave. It was all-in-all a great day of fun at the beach.