Key West

By Gaz under Bikes & Cars, Travel

Most people know about the US Highway 1 that runs the entire length of the Eastern coast of America from Fort Kent at the Canadian border all the way to Key West at the very southern tip of Florida. It is about 50 miles shorter than Route 66, which we rode our Harleys along from end to end over 3 months of last year, and consists mostly of coastal roads.

Something I’ve only discovered while we’ve been riding around in Florida since we picked up our Harleys in Miami almost 3 months ago, is that there is another road that runs parallel and East of Highway 1 past the intracoastal waterway, Florida State Road A1A. We actually rode along a section on the way back from The Florida Tattoo Expo a couple of weeks ago, but it’s easier to appreciate from this map that the road runs along a narrow strip of land with the waterway on one side and the Atlantic on the other.

Being based in the same spot for the last couple of months, the wanderlust has bitten again, so I’m planning a little 3 day road-trip to Key West for the rest of this week. We’ll take the same route through Melbourne Beach we rode the other day to join the A1A, and then spend the day cruising south along the road as far as Jupiter, which was where we left the A1A and rejoined the interstate on the way back from the tattoo expo. I imagine it will take about 8 hours to get past Fort Lauderdale, so we’ll spend the night somewhere between there and Miami.

The next morning, skirting around Miami by whatever route seems to have the lightest traffic, we’ll then be able to pick up the US-1 at Florida City to the South of Miami and ride the 124 miles along the Overseas Highway from Key Largo to Key West. Depending on how the time goes, we might stay there for the rest of the day, or maybe ride back up to the Everglades and take the airboat ride we missed outside Melbourne.

By my calculations, we’ll cover around 800 miles over 3 days, and I’m sure I’ll have some great photos to share with you when we get back.