Hobie Island Beach Park — Attraction in Miami

Beautiful little park, with a few shade tree areas. Good for families with younger children, as there are no large wave swells. The water is warm, because it's Florida. There is a neverending stretch of water plants at the tide's edge, but there is still plenty of sand to play in.

There are millions of pieces of plastic, beer bottle caps, and other trash in the sand and in the water. I'm definitely conservative politically, but we as humans have performed a horrific tragedy on the environment.

There are food trucks along the waterfront, though we didn't stop at any of them. The bathrooms were closed and there was a rental bathroom trailer instead. Inside it was fairly clean, but it was definitely out of the way to get there.

Finding parking is essentially impossible. We happened to get there as someone was backing out, but that's the only reason we got a spot. As we were leaving, there were at least a dozen cars waiting in the parking lot to take a spot once someone left.

There is a small outdoor shower for removing sand, which was very helpful, but the drain was completely clogged with sand.

While there, of course we smelled...skunk, if you catch my drift. You can't escape the dregs of society no matter where you go, and no matter how family friendly of a venue.

Overall this was a good beach. Maintenance is needed in some things, and parking could be improved, as well as cleaning up plastic waste on the beach, but we...

This is a narrow strip of vegetation and a long sandy beach along the road. There's quite a bit of trash on the beach, but not too bad, and it is regularly cleaned. The water is super calm and clean even on the windiest days when the rest of Miami beaches are stormy, but not crystal clear. The sea floor is sandy with grass and comfortably shallow (3-5') far away from the shore. If the wind comes from NE it brings funny smells from the nearby sewage treatment plant (located on the same island), but judging by the strong presence of endurance swimmers, it doesn't seem to pollute the water. It's easy to find a shady spot under the palm trees on a weekday, but not so easy on a weekend. Same with parking (which, BTW, is totally free -- pretty remarkable for Miami!). There're clean toilets and food/drink vendors, and every Thursday there's a Food Track party at the eastern end of the beach. Overall, pretty decent spot, especially if you're into length swimming...

I want to be very clear about my experience. I did not go to the beach, however, it felt very disappointed to go fishing to the bridge to have a nice sunset view and early night fishing and park rangers closed up all the gates around 5:30pm and kicked everyone out of the parking lot. I can not understand, and I also disagree with this. I had to park across the street by rusty pelicans restaurant, and I also had to pay because you are not supposed to park there and go to the bridge (they allowed me to be park until 7pm only). So fishing in the bridge is authorized all night long if you want, but I guess you are supposed to take an Uber as you are not allowed to park your vehicle in the parking lot... I had to pay tolls 2 times as you are not able to come back once you passed Rusty Pelican restaurant. I'm very disappointed with this (new considerate...