Day Trips from Miami: Everglades Entrance Fees, Vizcaya Hours and Key West by Car

MIAMI · DAY TRIPS · DRY SEASON FIRST

You are already here. The beach has been swum, the Cuban coffee counter has been visited twice, and the map starts pulling outward: sawgrass to the west, a hundred islands trailing south, a neighboring city up the interstate. Miami’s day-trip belt is narrower than the map suggests, and what decides it is rarely the distance. It is what waits at the far end when you finally park.

So each outing below carries two figures where we have them: what it takes out of the day, and what it costs at the gate. Where our sources publish no drive time, we say so instead of rounding one up. And one of these four makes a poor day trip from a Miami hotel, which is the part most lists leave out.

On this page

• Everglades entrance fee from Miami$35.00 per private vehicle, good for seven days
• Key West as a day tripThe answer, and the drive time we could not read
• Vizcaya hours and closing day9:30 a.m., last admission 4:30, closed Tuesdays
• A day in Fort LauderdaleLas Olas, the riverwalk and the I-95 run
• Hurricane season datesJune 1 to November 30, peak September 10
• Which month for the marshMiami in January: 76.2°F and 1.83 inches
• Everglades trails and entrances in detailThe full Everglades guide

Two of the four sit inside Miami-Dade County and cost you a morning. One asks for the whole day and hands back a corridor. The fourth, Key West, is the one we would rather you slept in. Fees and hours below come from the park and the museum, dated in the sources.

Everglades from Miami: entrance fee and which entrance

Everglades National Park charges $35.00 per private vehicle, and the receipt stays valid for seven days (National Park Service). On a week-long Miami stay that changes the arithmetic: one afternoon of boardwalks now, one early morning later, the same paper on the dashboard both times. Nobody has to fit the whole park into a single outing.

The park has three entrances plus the Flamingo Visitor Center, and the NPS puts at least an hour of driving between each of them. That one line settles the shape of your day: you choose an entrance, you do not tour them. Which of the three sits closest to your hotel is a drive time our source set does not carry, so take it from the park’s own directions page or from our Everglades guide, which handles the trails and the wildlife stops.

Alligators lie beside the walkways and wading birds work the shallows, and both are morning business. In mid-January the sun is over Miami at 7:07 a.m. and gone by 5:52 p.m., about 10 hours 45 minutes of daylight (sunrise-sunset.org, computed for the 15th). Mid-July stretches that to 6:38 a.m. and 8:15 p.m. Leaving at first light buys the animals before the heat and the parking lot before the coaches.

Season decides the rest. Statewide the dry months run November through April, and South Florida’s warm, dry stretch of that sits between December and April, roughly 65°F to 80°F. Rainfall is blunter still: June delivers 10.51 inches against January’s 1.83 (NOAA normals, 1991-2020). Every figure here was recorded at the Miami International Airport station, on the mainland east of the marsh, not by a gauge in the sawgrass. The month-by-month case lives in the Florida timing guide.

What we cannot price is the guided version. Airboat operators, hotel pickups and combination tickets appear in no source we would quote, and the $35 above is the park’s vehicle fee and nothing more. Ask any tour two questions before paying: whether that entrance fee is included, and which of the three entrances the coach actually uses.

Can you day-trip from Miami to Key West?

You can, and we would rather you didn’t. The Overseas Highway is the reason to go south, and a same-day return turns it into a corridor: bridges twice, once too early to look properly and once in the dark. Key West then gets whatever hours are left between the two drives, which is usually lunch and a hot walk.

How many hours that costs, we will not invent. Our verified sources carry no drive time and no mileage for the Miami to Key West run, and a guessed figure is worse than none at all. Take the number from the Florida road trip guide and add your stops, or ask the rental desk for the current state of US 1 on the day you leave. Bridge work and weekend traffic out of the Upper Keys both move it.

Key West repays a bed. Two nights at the end of the road buys the sunset ritual at Mallory Square, a morning on the reef, and the bridges seen in daylight in both directions. Our Key West guide makes that case, and Dry Tortugas is only reachable by people who slept down there first.

Vizcaya Museum and Gardens: hours and closing day

Vizcaya stands in north Coconut Grove, inside the City of Miami, its terraces facing Biscayne Bay. Plenty of travelers file it under Coral Gables, which is a separate city with its own government, incorporated on April 29, 1925. We had it wrong ourselves until September, and the correction is logged in the sources. Practically, the address means this is a city outing, not a county drive.

Doors open at 9:30 a.m., Wednesday through Monday, and the last admission is 4:30 p.m. (vizcaya.org). Adult entry is $20 while restoration work continues, down from the usual $25; children 6 to 12 pay $5 and under-6 go free. The Metrorail station called Vizcaya is a few minutes’ walk from the gate, one ride costs $2.25, and the daily fare cap is $5.65.

Tuesday is the closed day. It catches travelers who saved the estate for their rainy afternoon, and rainy afternoons do not consult the museum calendar. The free mainland fallback is the Pérez Art Museum, open at no charge from 5 to 9 p.m. every Thursday and all day on the second Saturday of the month, with art-making from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

How long the visit takes is the figure we could not read: vizcaya.org publishes the 9:30 opening and the 4:30 last admission, but no closing hour and no recommended length of stay. Ask at the ticket desk when you buy. What is certain is that the house and the formal gardens are two separate walks, and turning up near last admission leaves you time for one of them.

Fort Lauderdale from Miami

The neighboring city gives you a beach promenade without the Ocean Drive audience, the restaurants and shopfronts of Las Olas Boulevard, and a downtown riverwalk along the New River where the yachts do the parading. It is a change of register rather than a change of climate. If your Miami days have been loud, this is the quiet edition of the same coastline, and it fills a day without asking for a night.

By car it is the I-95 run north. The only figure our sources publish on that stretch is an airport transfer: Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood sits about 25 miles from South Beach, 35 to 50 minutes on the interstate. Those are indicative transport numbers rather than a schedule, and the airport lies south of downtown, so the city itself is a little further along. Brightline also links the two downtowns, as our getting-around guide explains. We could not read a current fare or journey time, so price that leg with the operator.

Hurricane season in Miami: dates and closures

The Atlantic hurricane season runs June 1 to November 30 and peaks on September 10, with most activity falling between mid-August and mid-October (NOAA National Hurricane Center). Hotel rates trace the same curve: lowest from August to October, highest February to April, which is the market telling you plainly what it makes of September.

Which of these outings the season shuts is not a list we can hand over. No source in our set publishes storm closure rules for the park entrances, for Vizcaya’s bay-front gardens or for the Overseas Highway. The one scheduled closure we can name remains Vizcaya’s Tuesday. Everything else gets announced day by day by the park, the museum and the county, and that is where to look the morning you intend to go.

Summer does not cancel the day trips, it shortens them. July normals at the airport gauge run 90.6°F by day and 77.5°F at night, with 7.36 inches of rain spread over 11.1 days of measurable wet, and the storms build in the afternoon, which is exactly the half of the day the marsh wanted. Humidity between 85 and 90 percent closes the argument. Walk the boardwalks at dawn, keep the Vizcaya interiors for two o’clock, and book the fall week refundable.

Sources & data for this guide

• Everglades entrance fee ($35.00 per private vehicle, seven days) and the spacing of the three entrances plus Flamingo · National Park Service · checked Sep 10, 2026
• Vizcaya hours, 4:30 p.m. last admission, Tuesday closure and admission ($20 during restoration, usually $25; $5 for ages 6 to 12) · vizcaya.org · checked Sep 10, 2026
• Vizcaya’s location in north Coconut Grove inside the City of Miami, and Coral Gables as a separate municipality incorporated April 29, 1925 · vizcaya.org Directions + Miami-Dade County municipalities · corrected Sep 7, 2026 after an earlier version of our notes placed the estate in Coral Gables
• Transit fares ($2.25 a ride, $5.65 daily cap, free Metromover) · Miami-Dade County, Transit Fares and Parking Fees · checked Sep 10, 2026 · a proposed rise to $2.75 was rejected, so ignore that figure elsewhere
• Pérez Art Museum free Thursday evenings and second Saturdays · pamm.org · checked Sep 10, 2026
• Hurricane season dates and the September 10 peak · NOAA National Hurricane Center · checked Sep 10, 2026
• January and July normals (1.83 in, 76.2°F high; 90.6°F, 77.5°F, 7.36 in, 11.1 wet days) and June’s 10.51 in · NOAA NCEI 1991-2020, station USW00012839, Miami International Airport · checked Sep 10, 2026
• Sunrise and sunset for the 15th of each month, converted to America/New_York · sunrise-sunset.org · checked Sep 10, 2026
• FLL at about 25 miles and 35 to 50 minutes from South Beach · airport transport sources, indicative durations rather than published schedules · checked Sep 10, 2026
• Hotel rate seasonality (lowest August to October, highest February to April) · market data relayed by local guides, a trend and not an official statistic · checked Sep 10, 2026
• Three gaps we could not close: a drive time for Miami to Key West, a Brightline fare and journey time, and a recommended length of stay at Vizcaya. Those are gaps in our reading, not in the world · ask the rental desk, the operator and the ticket desk.