Your Ultimate Guide to Dry Tortugas National Park: Day Trip or Camping?
- Jennifer Evans
- Aug 8, 2024
- 9 min read
If you want secluded beaches, a building full of history, an ocean full of animals, and an experience of a lifetime, Dry Tortugas National Park is one of the best options you can find, and you don’t even need a passport to get there.
Dry Tortugas National Park is one of the best hidden gems of America.
Well, I’m not sure if it’s considered “hidden” as it’s one of America’s well-known Sixty Three National Parks and technically located in the state of Florida. But considering it’s 70 miles away from the continental United States and less than 400 miles away from our neighboring country of Cuba, it feels pretty “hidden” to me.
FORT JEFFERSON
Dry Tortugas National Park became famous because it’s home to Fort Jefferson - an old Civil War fort that housed prisoners including Dr. Samuel Mudd after he treated John Wilkes Booth after he shot our 16th president, Abraham Lincoln.
This massive building has six sides, three stories, a lighthouse, a moat, dormant cannons, and even Dr. Mudd’s old prison cell.
You can climb stairs all the way up to the roof and the view from the top is truly panoramic, both inside and outside the fort.
Fort Jefferson also has a very small Visitor Center/Gift Shop for those who want to leave with a souvenir or two.
The moat has a walkable path that goes all the way around (with the exception of a collapsed piece) so you can truly see Fort Jefferson from all angles.
On either side of Fort Jefferson, you have the North Beach and the South Beach. The South Beach is typically calmer water with easy access from land while the North Shore tends to be steeper with rougher waters.
HOW TO GET THERE
Now there are only two (really three) ways to visit Dry Tortugas National Park making it one of the least visited National Parks in the entire country. According to the Yankee Freedom Ferry’s website, it’s estimated that approximately 80,000 people visit Dry Tortugas each year which averages out to only 219 people per day.
For comparison, the most visited US National Park is the Great Smoky Mountains which gets 13.2 million visitors per year which averages out at almost 36,500 visitors per day according to the National Park Service.
The first and most popular way to visit Dry Tortugas is the Yankee Freedom Ferry. This ferry boat departs from Key West, Florida and it takes roughly 2-2.5 hours one way to get to the island.
I have visited Dry Tortugas twice and took the Yankee Freedom Ferry both times and had wonderful experiences. The staff is very knowledgeable and energetic and the ferry boat itself has an abundance of amenities such as both indoor and outdoor seating, the “galley” that sells food, drinks, and souvenirs, and it even opens up a bar on your return ride back to the mainland. Your ticket includes free snorkeling gear and trust me, you’ll want to take advantage of that! Your ticket also includes lunch and if you’re only there for a day trip, the ferry stays docked the entire time so if you need to go to the restroom, buy a snack, or just get a burst of air conditioning, it’s readily available and waiting for you. You HAVE to book these tickets far in advance because due to the limited capacity, these tickets sell out often months in advance.
The second way to get to Dry Tortugas (which is on my bucket list) is taking a seaplane. Watching seaplanes land and take off was so mesmerizing and I wish I had taken advantage of the opportunity to go. Talking with the seaplane passengers, they had nothing but amazing things to say about their experience and they loved the added thrill to their adventure.
Now the third way to get there was wild and far less popular than the other two options. After our ferry arrived, we noticed sailboats anchored randomly around the island. If the ferry took us 2-2.5 hours one way, I can only imagine how long it would take to get from the mainland to Dry Tortugas on a sailboat. The people we talked to from the sailboats said they just had to pay a nightly fee and they would sleep on their sailboat each night. These people tended to be avid fishermen or divers who had extensive knowledge about being on the water. It didn’t seem to appear that these were any specific tour companies, rather people who literally just gathered a group of friends and went. We learned a lot from these guys as they knew way more about sea creatures than the rest of us. But these guys were often committed to a 1-2 week long adventure while the rest of us were just there for 1-3 days.
DAY TRIP
I’m so proud to say I’ve had both the day trip and the camping experience at Dry Tortugas.
I went for the first time as a solo trip to Florida to unwind and get in a quick weekend adventure. My entire trip to Florida was 2 nights and I flew into Miami which is 3+ hours away from Key West, just to try and save a few dollars. On this trip, I spent the entire weekend car camping and even slept at the airport the night before my flight took off to head home.
Needles to say, my time in the keys wasn’t anywhere near long enough and I came home itching for more.
For a day trip with Yankee Freedom Ferry, you arrive at the Ferry Port at 7:00am and begin the check in process.
PRO TIP: If you have an Annual National Park Pass, you’re able to save $30 on your ticket that gets refunded once you arrive.
After you check in, you get a debrief on the process, the weather, the timeline, and any other crucial information.
By the time everyone gets on the boat, you leave the port at approximately 8:00am. Approximately 40-45 minutes later, you lose cell phone service and won’t get it back until you reach the same point on the way back.
After typically seeing a ton of dolphins from the ferry, you’ll then arrive at Dry Tortugas at around 10:30am and the ferry will depart at 3:00pm which gives you only around 4.5 hours to explore. That may sound like a lot of time since it’s a fairly small park but due to the abundance of activity options, I felt rushed as only a day trip traveler.
Once you arrive at Dry Tortugas, the staff offers a brief history tour or a full walking tour of Fort Jefferson. The staff on the ferry told us that we are more than welcome to do this but that it does take a lot of time away from exploring the rest of the island on our own.
In my 4.5 hours, I was able to take a lap or two around Fort Jefferson (which is very easy to get lost in), take a quick lunch break, and snorkel all the way around the fort. Since I’m not the best of swimmers, I started on the calmer South Beach and worked my way to the rougher North Beach. Once I arrived at North Beach, I was told that the North Beach snorkelers had some great wildlife sightings out in the distance but by then, I was exhausted and it was almost time to return to the ferry for departure.
On the North Beach, I started talking to a camper who was talking about how gorgeous the night’s sky was at Dry Tortugas. While everybody else seemed rushed, he seemed so calm and at peace and the conversation I had with him immediately convinced me that I had to come back to camp.
On the ferry ride back to the mainland, I enjoyed a nice cold margarita and a nap before having to rush my way around sightseeing in Key West and drive the 3+ hours back to Miami to catch my flight. You arrive back to Key West at approximately 5:30pm which gets you there just in time to find a big dinner to end your busy day.
CAMPING
When I came home from Florida, I raved about my experience so much that I convinced my husband and our two best friends to join. I told them about the conversation I had with the camper and they agreed to try out camping with me.
After having both experiences, I can proudly say that camping was 10000% better than a day trip (but a day trip is ALWAYS better than nothing).
Before our trip, we found a camping gear rental company called Camping Florida Keys. Online, you tell them how many people you are camping with and you customize your own camping kit.
A camping trip at Dry Tortugas starts almost identically as a day trip does. You meet at the port a little bit earlier than the day-trippers and someone from Camping Florida Keys met us with our equipment all nicely packed in totes for us. We were able to wheel our supplies in wheelbarrows to the staff of Yankee Freedom Ferry and they loaded it on the ferry for us and gave us a quick orientation about camping and then we joined the rest of our group and began our day.
PRO TIP: The ferry CAN be canceled or delayed any day due to maintenance or weather so ALWAYS bring enough food to last you an extra 24 hours than you planned for, just in case.
After your ferry ride, you show up to Fort Jefferson just like I explained with the day trip. However, now your first priority is finding a campsite. There are only 11 campsites on the entire island and the sites themselves are not pre-reserved so it’s just first come, first serve. They do not book more than 11 campsites worth of people for each night so you’ll always have a campsite for your group. But the campsites have a variety of locations on the island so it’s up to you to find the best one.
They all had their ups and downs. Just like the staff explained on board, the tent sites in the shade are away from the sun but have no wind. The tent sites in the sun were hot but windy. And the tent sites near the water had sand flying everywhere. So you just have to set your priorities and choose which tent site to settle down in.
The most LEAST EXPECTED part of this experience was the sheer amount of hermit crabs that were near these campsites. My husband and our friends were tasked with getting our gear off the boat and they chose to send me running to the campsites so we could claim one. Once I got there, I would have thought I had just done some hardcore drugs because I thought the ground was legitimately moving because of how many hermit crabs there were. It abruptly stopped me in my tracks and I took a few steps back and waited for my husband and our friends to catch up.
Now, I learned that hermit crabs are more afraid of us than we are of them. But they aren’t the fastest creatures in the world, so it just took them some time to get out of our way.
We took some time to set up our campsite and then started exploring the island. I told my husband and our friends about the time I snorkeled all the way around the island and I quickly learned that you’re only able to do that if the ocean conditions are calm. In an attempt to do this again, we turned 2-3 sides around the island and had to turn around and snorkel back as it was too rough to get to the North Shore safely. We still enjoyed some cool fish sightings and even saw an old anchor.
PRO TIP: constantly be on the look out for jellyfish if you are in the water. They are all over the place and will hurt you if you touch them.
Once 3pm started rolling around, the island was becoming emptier and emptier and eventually, we saw the ferry start driving away with all the day-trippers we rode to the island with. As a former day-tripper, this was so weird to see and it dawned on us that we were truly practically alone on this island.
The National Park Services houses a few employees 24/7 in a section of the fort and there are up to 11 campsites that can be filled with guests. But we think there were only 3 other campsites occupied when we were there and staff members pretty much just stayed out of the way.
We swam and snorkeled a little bit more, changed clothes and got some incredible photos in the empty fort, and then started preparing for dinner. Each campsite had a grill we were able to cook on.
As the sky became darker, the stars became brighter. Unfortunately, we experienced a little rain so the skies weren’t totally clear. But every time the clouds started moving out of the way, the stars behind were absolutely breathtaking and we just sat back and watched.
The next morning, we packed up our rental equipment and our personal items and brought it all to the dock.
Once the Yankee Freedom Ferry arrived with the next group of day-trippers, they loaded our belongings back onto the ferry and we saw the fresh, bright-eyed visitors start to explore the island.
We walked around, said our final goodbyes to a place that stole our hearts, and boarded the ferry for some much needed food and air conditioning until the rest of the day-trippers boarded the ferry as well and we went back to the mainland.
CONCLUSION
We made it back to Key West and ultimately ended up having a wonderful rest of our trip.
Dry Tortugas National Park is a sincere beauty and one of the highlights of the US National Park Service. While having a day trip will introduce you to the island, allow you to check a bucket list item off your list, and give you great memories, camping at Dry Tortugas will be something like you’ve never experienced before and it’s worth every penny, second, and ounce of effort that you have to put into making it happen.
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