Florida Keys Camping

The Florida Keys arc 120 miles southwest from the mainland into the Straits of Florida, a chain of low coral and limestone islands connected by the Overseas Highway. The ecology is marine: mangrove shorelines, seagrass flats, the only living coral reef in the continental United States, and hammocks of tropical hardwoods that grow nowhere else in the country. Land is scarce, and land zoned for camping is scarcer — so the Keys have a fraction of the sites found on the mainland, heavily weighted toward oceanfront RV resorts and a handful of state parks.

The anchors are John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park in Key Largo, Long Key State Park, Curry Hammock State Park, and Bahia Honda State Park — the last usually cited as the best beach in the Keys, and nearly impossible to reserve without months of lead time. Windley Key Fossil Reef and Dagny Johnson Key Largo Hammock Botanical State Park round out the state-park inventory, and backcountry tent sites at Dry Tortugas National Park on Garden Key are reachable only by ferry or seaplane. Private options like Sunshine Key, Fiesta Key, and Bluewater Key RV Resort charge premium rates year-round.

Peak season is December through April, when the trade winds moderate heat and humidity; state-park reservations open eleven months ahead and fill within minutes. Summer and early fall are hot, buggy, and dangerous — the Keys sit squarely in the Atlantic hurricane belt, and evacuation orders for tropical systems close the Overseas Highway from June through November.