Keewaydin Island: The Beach With No Road to It

Keewaydin Island runs eight miles south from Gordon Pass to Marco, and there is no way onto it. No bridge, no causeway, no parking lot, no boardwalk, no restrooms, no lifeguard, no snack bar. It is the only beach on this stretch of coast that still looks the way the whole coast looked in 1950, and the reason is entirely logistical: you have to arrive by boat.

Why the shelling is better here

Two reasons. First, nobody has picked it over — a beach with a hundred visitors a day yields differently to one with ten thousand. Second, geography: the island sits where the Gulf's longshore current meets the outflow from Gordon Pass, and shell material accumulates along the southern half and at the tidal cuts rather than dispersing.

• Fighting conchs, lightning whelks and horse conchs — Florida's state shell, sometimes eight inches
• Alphabet cones, banded tulips, apple murex and the occasional junonia if the day owes you one
• Sand dollars in the flats on a low outgoing tide
• Best window: the hour either side of low tide, ideally the morning after a west wind

Getting there

Private captains out of Naples Bay run Keewaydin as a three- or five-hour trip: twenty-five minutes down the bay and through the pass, then a bow landing on the sand. Three hours is a beach visit; five is a proper day — swim, shell, lunch, a second stop, and a slow run home. Expect roughly $595 for the three-hour version and $765 for five hours for up to six people, with sunset-timed options a little higher.

What to bring

• More water than you think, and a hat you don't mind losing
• Reef-safe sunscreen; there is no shade beyond what you carry
• A mesh bag for shells — captains here usually supply bags and buckets
• Shoes you can get wet, for the shell line and the oyster edges at the cuts
• Cash for nothing, because there is nothing to buy, which is the point

Rules worth knowing

Take only empty shells — collecting live shells is illegal in Collier County, and a shell with an animal in it goes back in the water. Sand dollars are alive when they are brown and fuzzy. Sea turtle nesting runs May through October, so stay off the marked areas and keep lights off the dunes at dusk.