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Best Day Trip

Loop Road

About four miles past the Shark Valley entrance to Everglades National Park, the Tamiami Trail (SW Eighth Street) makes a sharp bend to the northeast. Just at that point (look for a small church) an unmarked road peels off to the south and then veers eastward. This is the Loop Road, so named because it curves around to rejoin the Trail some 22 miles later. In between, however, lies an adventure, and you don't need an off-road vehicle to enjoy it. The first couple of miles are paved and punctuated by the homes of Miccosukee families. A little further along is a scattering of more rugged houses occupied by loners and weekend hunters. At the site of a secluded National Park Service environmental-education center the pavement ends and the real fun begins. From here the road is hard-packed dirt, which is quite passable except after heavy showers. It is dirt, though, so expect dust. Also expect a few fishermen, along with some of the most lovely scenery this side of a Clyde Butcher swamp photo. The south side of the road is the wet side, and it pays to get out and stroll now and then to take in the lush vegetation, deep pools, lazy gators, and cypress groves. Pack a lunch, bring a folding chair, relax. During the warm months, be sure to bring insect repellent.

Best Picnic Spot

Alice Wainwright Park

Courtesy of the GMCVB
Alice Wainwright has an amazing view of Biscayne Bay. Not Alice herself; the venerable lawyer and devoted conservationist left this world in 1991 at age 83. But the 25-acre park aptly named in her honor in 1974 is one of the only waterfront havens left that offers a glimpse of pre-bulldozer Miami. With just a short drive or healthy walk from the condos and office buildings of Brickell, you can be in one of the last subtropical hardwood hammocks in the area. The seawall is a work of art and a perfect perch for a picnic basket.

Best Fishing Hole

Island View Park

By the mangrove bushes at the southern edge of the park runs a little catwalk. Beneath the catwalk are the fast-running waters of Biscayne Bay. A low bridge just to the south blocks boat traffic, while the currents bring baitfish through. Waiting for the baitfish are any number of lunkers, snook, tarpon, snapper, sea trout. And you're standing over it all, literally and figuratively atop the food chain. A beautiful green park behind you, the colorful winding bay in front of you, and all kinds of possibilities beneath you.

  • 1700 Purdy Ave., Miami Beach, 33139 Map

Best Place To Mountain Bike

Oleta River State Recreation Area

You can bet a hand brake this bike path never would have been allowed in a hardwood hammock. In the Seventies developers dug a large swath of land off the MacArthur Causeway. When their plans for an Epcot-like trade center were abandoned, the State of Florida stepped in and bought the 1043-acre site. Opened to the public in August 1986, the Oleta River State Recreation Area became Florida's largest urban park. Although the land itself was preserved -- a good thing -- much of its native vegetation had been destroyed. A bad thing -- unless you're an Australian pine or a mountain biker. The fast-growing invader tree overtook the cleared berms and gullies left by developers. And mountain bikers scored big with more than eleven miles of narrow trails through which to bump, roll, curve, whip, and make hairpin turns. Here riders can race through dense woods thickly carpeted with pine needles, past stands of pampas grass with their feathery plumes, overlooking mangrove preserves and lagoons. Some purists say the bike trails at Markham Park in Sunrise surpass these, but tack this on to Oleta's allure: a 1000-foot-long sandy beach on Biscayne Bay, several covered picnic pavilions, fourteen primitive cabins, kayaks and canoes for rent, and a couple of miles of paved trails for Rollerbladers and less rugged two-wheelers.

Best Hole At A Golf Course

Number six

Now that Bill Clinton is out of the White House, he'll probably spend a lot more time golfing in South Florida, and you can be sure one of his priorities will be improving his approach to the sixth hole at the Biltmore. Hole number six is deceptively difficult, playing 401 yards from the blue tees, 383 from the white tees, and 350 from the ladies' tee. Although the fairway is straight, a water hazard runs down the left-hand side and then cuts across the fairway in front of the green. An L-shape sand trap also awaits you in front of the green, leaving little room for error. But even once you reach the green, your work isn't done, as its two-tiered expanse offers more uncertainty. The mental challenge the sixth hole presents is yet another component of its appeal. Golfers know as they near it that it will be the first of a difficult three-hole series likely to make or break a player's entire round. Staying focused, and not letting the water hazards turn you paranoid, makes this a signature hole worthy of even the former president's utmost, ah, powers of negotiation.

Best Place To Jog

Curtis Park

On a spring morning, eight o'clock or so, sun still low in the pale sky and the traffic on Twentieth Street only beginning to get noisy, the track is a peaceful proving ground. It is Curtis Park's well-maintained central attraction (there also is a great basketball court and a swimming pool). Two banks of stadium seats rise on the track's eastern and western sides, all the better to observe afternoon and nighttime track-and-field competitions among nearby schools and clubs. And above the seats rise the old shade trees that have beautified Allapattah for decades; they enfold the park, shielding but not removing it from its very urban setting just north of the Miami River in the middle of a seamy, down-at-the-heels garment district.

Best Beach

Second Street

Okay, okay, the experts haven spoken, and even we, professional naysayers that we are, can't deny it: South Beach is one of the nation's best beaches. It possesses miles and miles of shimmering white sand, a travel-poster blue-green slice of the Atlantic Ocean, not to mention a herd of hard, sweaty, beautiful bodies absorbing the rays. Fine. But does going there have to entail fighting rush-hour-caliber traffic in every direction at every hour of the day, every day of the week, competing with a million motorists for what seems like the last open parking space on the planet, before having to lug your crap six blocks to the water? Nope. Go south, people, go south, far from the maddening crowds on Tenth, Eleventh, and Twelfth streets, and toward the relative peace of lower SoBe. Located across from a residential area, this prime stretch of sand and water caters to the serious beachgoer, there not to be seen but to soak up sun, not to watch but to wade. And you can usually find parking.

Best Place To Ditch The Kids For A Few Hours

Matheson Hammock Park and Marina Atoll Pool

With its calm waters, lifeguards on every corner of the beach, and depths that don't exceed nine feet, it's pretty safe to say this manmade atoll pool, open daily till six or seven, is the only playa in town where kids can frolic in the sand unattended. Tidal action from bordering Biscayne Bay flushes the pool's warm waters naturally, keeping them clean and bacteria-free (assuming the bay happens to be, too). Meanwhile parents who've paid the four-dollar-per-car entry fee might as well stick around and enjoy some time to themselves, roaming the park's nature trails or grabbing a bite at Matheson Hammock's Red Fish Grill. There also are a snack bar and picnic pavilions nearby, so you can stay within earshot should Junior need you. But before dropping off your offspring, make sure they're well equipped with sunblock, that they know how to swim (duh!), and that they're all beyond six years old. Although the park doesn't prohibit unsupervised older kids, for the record, they don't recommend it either. As one employee cautions, "This is Miami, after all."

Best Place To People-Watch

La Carreta Restaurant

There's something inherently interesting about watching people in transit, in the very process of movement, change, adaptation. And people around food? Always revealing. This is one of seven La Carreta Cuban restaurants in the Miami area, though this particular location has blended in to its airport setting by being a self-serve, overpriced, eat-and-run-and-fly cafeteria. The whole mundane panorama is here to be entertained by (or ignored, depending on how the trip's going). Someone is always rushing in and out, almost falling asleep, almost hysterical; travelers from all over the globe -- shuttle drivers, mechanics, airplane crews. Anglo pilot orders the classic Cuban beef dish ropa vieja from Latin server: "I'll have the old clothes, por favor." Server doesn't miss a beat.

Best Topless Beach

Miami Beach, between 65th and 78th streets

Under a yellow umbrella on the 66th Street beach, a topless French woman serenely sits on her folding chair and reads a novel; nearby her naked toddler dumps sand into an orange plastic bucket of water. A little further up on 73rd Street, a curvaceous lady with a tattoo of an Aztec bird on her well-toned stomach plays paddleball with her boyfriend. She, too, is bare above and totally comfortable about it. At 75th Street a bleach blonde from Argentina stretches out on her back, defiantly facing the sun with her naked chest. Her skin is the color of dark chocolate. On the sand next to her sits a steaming cup of yerba maté, ready to drink. Approaching 77th Street five friends form a circle by the ocean -- some sit; others lie on pareos. Engaged in conversation peppered with laughter, the women free themselves from their bikini halters. Totally uninhibited and beautiful, they burst into songs by Los Fabulosos Cadillacs. All along this glorious swatch of sea and sand coexist throngs of families, children, bare-breasted women, and men who don't stare.

Best Of Miami®

Best Of Miami®

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