Any National Parks aficionado has the Dry Tortugas on their bucket list. It is embarrassing to say that despite traveling to the Florida Keys for more than 35 years, I only just now checked that item off. And I greatly regret not doing so sooner.

The Dry Tortugas is one of the lesser visited national parks. While the park itself is about 100 square miles, most of that is under water. And much of the dry land in the park is off limits. Of the seven islands in Dry Tortugas, only Garden Key is accessible to visitors without a private boat. But that island is such a unique experience and I feel so fortunate to have been able to camp there.

How to Get There

There are limited options to access the Dry Tortugas. Two concessionaires are sanctioned by the National Park Service. A ferry, the Yankee Freedom, carries about 180 people to and from the island daily. Travelers depart Key West at 8:00am and arrive around 10:30am. Those returning the same day must be back on the boat by 2:45pm for the return trip which docks back in Key West at about 5:30pm every evening. The roundtrip cost is currently $235 for the ferry.

Alternatively, Key West Seaplane Adventures makes several trips per day. These flights are about 40 minutes long. The half day option gives about 2 1/2 hours of island time at a cost of $500 per person. For nearly $900 per person, you can pick the all-day charter that will give you 6 1/2 hours on the island.

I knew that none of those choices would satisfy me so I decided to camp on the island. The Yankee Freedom reserves about 10 slots per day for campers. These are very hard to come by, so it took a few years of coordinating my time in Florida with camping slot availability. We booked in January of 2024 for our December trip, but others on the island booked a recently as a couple months ago. I am not sure there is much rhyme or reason to when camping slots are released. Several other campers told me they were told to check back often. Camping is not available by seaplane due to the weight of the gear, but private boats can and do travel to the park. That may be an option if you are interested in throwing money at a bucketlist trip.

Camping is permitted for one, two, or three nights. I would say that two nights would be the sweet-spot. With one night, it felt like we spent a significant amount of our time setting up and packing up camp. It probably also didn’t help that we were camping the day before the winter solstice, so it got dark soon after the ferry left. Three nights feels like it would be a little long. I got the impression that the ferry company is only offering one or three night options right now – not sure why. Camping on Dry Tortugas is a little different from other camping I have done, so I don’t think we would have been prepared for three nights. Now that I have experience, I would love to do a three night trip in the future.

We drove down from Key Largo to Key West the day before our trip departed. While the Florida Keys are only 100 miles long, US-1 is a congested route. The trip is at least 2 1/2 hours long, without stops. At night, the speed limit drops to 35mph in the key deer territory, making the trip even longer. Of course, there is much to see along the keys, so I highly recommend taking at least a day for the trip. Even though we have done the trip many times, we still made a stop at Bahia Honda State Park and the Key Deer Refuge.

Because we were interested in getting dinner and a good night’s sleep before our trip, we saved money by staying away from the Sunset Pier and other more walkable areas of Key West. We spent the evening at the Hilton Garden Inn. This was a pretty mediocre hotel, but functional for the night. It was surrounded by the signature Key West roosters and the complementary earplugs indicate that guests interested in a more relaxing vacation might have found their morning calls to be annoying. Fortunately, we woke up before the roosters at 4:30am. In fact, we might have disturbed the roosters.

Departing for the Island

The address provided by the ferry company was not an unloading area like I expected, by just a dead end street. Pull up on the street and unload into the terminal. Since there are only a handful of camping parties, this isn’t as chaotic as I thought it would be. Parking is available in a garage the next block up, NOT across the street. The garage across the street has a limit of 24 hour parking. It would definitely be terrible to come back to a towed car.

We were onsite by 6am. Unloading is pretty quick and then you wait around until boarding at 7:30. There are nearby breakfast and coffee options, but we had found an open Starbucks on the way from the hotel. I think that worked out well because at 7:30 when actual check-in began, we were able to secure a low boarding number. This got us on the boat early and gave us the pick of seating.

Seating on the Yankee Freedom is available upstairs and down. We chose downstairs for a slightly more stable ride. A complimentary light breakfast, bagels, yogurt, etc., is a available as well as Dramamine for purchase.

I should probably take a minute to talk about motion sickness. For some reason, the possibility didn’t really occur to me so I failed to bring my normal pelagic precautions. Since returning, I have heard absolute horror stories. From what I can surmise, it is not so much because the crossing is exceptionally rough, but because of the close proximity of others. Those who get sick out of sympathy can have a really rough time of it. However, the Dramamine available on board is the drowsy kind. There were several people who slept most of the boat ride. I would strongly suggest preparing for rough seas. Dramamine works best when taken an hour early. So take some non-drowsy Dramamine when you wake up, wear patches and wrist bands, don’t plan on reading, bring ginger and/or crackers, keep your eyes on the horizon, and head out for fresh air. The staff on the boat were phenomenal at checking for those who might look a little green and they seemed to have a huge amount of experience.

The ride is about 2 1/2 hours and most of our trip was incredibly foggy. The dense clouds broke about halfway so the sun glistened off the water as we approached the park. The boat circles the island before landing, providing excellent views of home for the next 28 hours. While day-trippers disembarked, the campers met on the upper deck for a briefing. We were told a little about rules and what to do in case of an emergency as the staff unloaded our gear.

On the Island

Based on what I had read online, I was a little worried about getting a campsite and having to sleep in the overflow area. This was not an issue on the day we arrived. Plenty of empty campsites were strewn among the trees. A couple were more inside the thicket and even required walking through another site to access- really not a problem as we were all very friendly. Mom and I selected a site on the fort side of the campground because there was both shade and sun. We claimed our site and went back to get our gear. There are heavy-duty wheelbarrows provided, so getting the heavy cooler and totes over wasn’t as bad as might be expected.

We really wanted to do the tour of Fort Jefferson so we dropped our gear and met up with the group inside the fort. The tour is provided by the staff of the Yankee Freedom and is supposed to be limited to 25, but no one seemed to mind our joining. Hollywood was our guide and his passion for the history was absolutely infectious. I love watching others talk about their special interests and Hollywood’s tour was a 10/10 experience.

Fort Jefferson, is one of the largest coastal forts ever built in the United States. Constructed between 1846 and 1875, the fort was part of a strategic military effort to protect the Gulf of Mexico shipping lanes and U.S. trade routes from potential threats. Despite its imposing size—spanning 16 acres-the fort was never fully completed or used in battle. According to Guide Hollywood, control of the fort during the Civil War fell to the Union due to cunning and bluster rather than cannonballs.

One of its most famous roles was as a Civil War-era prison, housing Union deserters and political prisoners, including Dr. Samuel Mudd, the physician convicted of aiding John Wilkes Booth after the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. When a deadly yellow fever outbreak took out the fort’s doctor, Dr. Mudd stepped up to tend to patients, for which he was later pardoned.

Eventually, developing maritime technologies made such a behemoth obsolete and many of its cutting edge features such as water cisterns began to crumble under the weight of its own 16 million bricks. Today, the western end of the fort houses the park rangers and other staff and are off-limits. Tourists are free to explore three levels of battlements throughout the rest of fort.

We returned to our campsite after our tour to set up and enjoy lunch. One complementary box lunch is provided by the Yankee Freedom, but that is for your final day. Other food is available for purchase though. We brought tuna salad kits and enjoyed ourselves in the shade.

One of the most unique features of the Dry Tortugas is the overwhelming number of hermit crabs. While I very much enjoy crabs when they are solitary or in small groups, once they begin to congregate in the thousands it starts to get uncomfortable. The clicking of their shells became the white noise of the campsite as they explored. They were curious about the food we brought and also enjoyed sipping the fresh water from the cooler. Their explorations continued into the night so walking about after dark required extra vigilance.

Around 3pm the Yankee Freedom drove away and the couple dozen campers and staff were alone on the island. The peacefulness of the vast expanses of blue was indescribable. We did a little bird watching from the dock and witnessed a colossal Giant Grouper swim past. A few campers were fishing off the dock, but I don’t think the grouper was biting.

We then walked out toward Long Key. This is home to the largest nesting population of Magnificent Frigatebirds in the continental US while the only significant US Sooty Tern breeding population is on Bush Key. During nesting season, these islands are off-limits but we were able to walk the beach and watch their antics.

Once the boat leaves, the bathroom opens. This remains locked while the boat is docked in order to keep them relatively clean for the campers. While they are just pit toilets, they are decent. Apparently they are typically lit through the night but we were warned by the ranger that the recent hurricane took out their electric. They were powered by a secondary generator that runs out of fuel in the middle of the night so bring a light. Since the rest of the island was dark, it would never occur to me to not bring a light on a midde of the night bathroom trip.

After our walk along the beach we had hoped to enjoy a happy hour sunset on the beach. The clouds would not cooperate. We ended up toting our chairs to the beach to watch the ocean as we relaxed with chips, salsa and drinks. Despite the lack of sun, it was breath-taking and we had the beach more-or-less to ourselves. I spotted a shark by the moat wall so we took a walk to see if we could get a better view. No luck, but we did enjoy watching the waves crash against the bricks.

We had hoped to satisfy our bellies with a hot dinner. We brought hotdogs and charcoal and each campsite had its own grill. I don’t know if I am bad at matchlight charcoal, but our fire never got very hot. We had hot dog sticks and tried to roast over the coals, but the hot dogs barely got warm. And because we were using the sticks, we kept hitting the coals. We had a rather mediocre dinner in the dark. Fortunately, we had plenty of drinks to make us not care.

After dinner, we enjoyed more time on the beach. The clouds gave us a break and we were able to enjoy a spectacular display of stars. The night sky in the midde of the ocean really is a transcendant experience. In the distance, shrimp boats lined up, hoping that the changing weather would bring shrimp to their nets. My only disappointment with the island was the lack of true silence. The electricity on the island is supplied by diesel generator, so a constant low hum accompanied the rolls of the waves. It wasn’t horrible, but not the true escape from noise I was hoping for.

Soon we grew tired and got ready for bed. It was not the most restful night of sleep I’ve ever had. I really wish we had put some more thought into bringing a better sleep set up. We were there on a relatively cool night, but it was too hot for sleeping bags. I thing some sort of sleep sack on top of a bag would be perfect. We opted not to use the rain fly and watching the moon and stars every time I woke up totally made up for the fitful sleep.

In the morning we attempted to get up for the sunrise, but again the clouds denied our request. So we enjoyed our coffee and then ate the rest of the food we brought. Not really, but we did have a hearty breakfast with fruit, bagels and yogurt.

It was time to pack up because we had to have our gear back on the dock by 10:30am in preparation for the boat’s arrival at 11am. Again, it would have been lovely to have another day on the island. It felt like we were just settling in and we needed to get everything down to the docks.

We chose to spend our final peaceful hour before the boat arrived touring the fort. We explored more of the casements and enjoyed the views from the top. There was much to explore and the blue skies reflected in the turquoise waters.

The arrival of the boat was bittersweet. We felt a little like we lost our private oasis, but it was nice to use a flush bathroom and grab our sandwich. After eating lunch we avoided the crowds by finding a relatively quiet spot to soak our feet in the water.

It was finally time to load up on the boat and head for the mainland. We were tired, but energized from our night in a tropical paradise. Even though we arrived back in Key West around dinner, we made the drive back to Key Largo. It was a long few days, but worth every minute.

Packing and Lessons Learned

This was one of those trips where I immediately started planning my next trip because I know I will eventually come back.

• Packing for this trip was trickier than other trips because of the restrictions placed by the ferry company. We each were allowed to bring one cooler, one large tote, and one large backpack. These were loaded onto the back of the boat and we didn’t have access on either boat trip or after the gear was loaded on the dock. I highly recommend a smaller day pack to keep with you as well.
• We were expected to bring at least a gallon of water per person, per day. This doesn’t count towards our gear. We brought 2 1/2 gallon containers. Ice and water are available from the boat when it is in dock. I think they would frown if you brought jugs to fill, but it was nice to refill cold, clean water bottles.
• Liquid gas is not allowed on the ferry – only charcoal and solid fuels. We ended up buying a small solid fuel stove set from Amazon. This worked great for heating up small amounts of water for coffee in the morning. The family next to us had a larger version I would look into for next time.
• You must bring a tent. No cowboy camping allowed.
• Bring beach chairs – We brought one and a packable chair. The packable chair did not work on the sand. I was afraid they wouldn’t let us bring the beach chair, but they didn’t really care. Of course, I am sure this is subject to how much other campers may be bringing. Although day-trippers also brought chairs and stuck them between the seats.
• It would have been really nice to have a kayak to explore around the island, but that also would have been a pain. Definitely would have been worth it for three nights though.
• Bring cash and credit cards. The Fort has an actual gift shop and the boat has snacks and drinks.

One of the main reasons to visit the Dry Tortugas is the snorkeling, but we never got around to it. We are both certified SCUBA divers and so we have spent plenty of time in the water. But we would have loved to experience the protected reefs of the national park. Unfortunately, our days on the island were on the cooler side which made the waters less appealing. And we didn’t prepare correctly. Snorkeling gear is available to borrow from the Yankee Freedom crew. We brought our own, needing to borrow only a vest. But we didn’t manage the logistics of swimwear very well. Ideally we would have kept out a change of clothes from the gear we loaded onto the boat and hopped in while people were arriving on the second day. But we were too concerned about packing up. This is where staying longer would have been nice. I think trying to cram snorkeling into a day trip would be a lot if you have any interest in the fort at all. But if you do decide to hop in, there is a fresh water rinse aboard the boat. I guess this means we will have to go back!