Four children standing ankle-deep in the Gulf surf holding green buckets on a quiet island beach near Marco Island, Florida

Day Trips

From North Port to the Islands With No Parking Lot

You already get in the car for salt water — everybody here does, because the city limits stop ten or fifteen miles short of the Gulf. So the question was never whether to drive; it is only what another hour buys, and the answer sits 1 hr 15 to 1 hr 50 away at our Naples dock, or 1 hr 50 to 2 hr 30 at Goodland.

Goodland & Naples marinas
1 hr 50–2 hr 30 to our Goodland dock
All ages welcome
USCG Master Captains

Check Availability & Book (239) 301-8913

Drive to our docks1 hr 50–2 hr 30 to Goodland; 1 hr 15–1 hr 50 to Naples

Departure marinaSan Marco Marina, 604 E Palm Ave, Goodland, FL 34140

Waterthe Ten Thousand Islands — unbridged mangrove keys, passes and shell beaches

You may seedolphins, ospreys, spoonbills, an unwalked tide line — wild, so never promised

The Extra Hour

The one thing a longer drive can actually buy

Here is the thing nobody in this city needs explained: there is no beach at the end of your street. North Port sits ten to fifteen miles inland and the city limits never quite reach the Gulf, whatever the travel copy says. So a beach day already begins in the car — twenty minutes, forty-five minutes, depending which way you point it and what month it is. You made peace with that a long time ago. Which means this page is not going to try to sell you on driving to reach salt water, because you do it constantly. The only question worth asking is what a longer haul buys you that a shorter one cannot.

What it buys is a beach with no parking lot attached to it, and that is the entire product. Every stretch of public sand you can reach by car gets read every single morning by everybody else who can reach it by car. That is not a knock on those beaches — they are good, they are half the reason people move down here, and most weekends they are exactly the right call. It is simply arithmetic: road access is what wears a tide line out. The island beaches we run to have no bridge, no lot and no road at all, so the tide refills them overnight and nobody has been out there since.

Now the honest part, because this is the longest haul of any page in this set. Our Naples dock at Naples Bay Resort & Marina is 1 hr 15 to 1 hr 50 from here, and our Goodland dock at San Marco Marina is 1 hr 50 to 2 hr 30 — Toledo Blade or Sumter Boulevard onto I-75, then south for either one. Goodland runs roughly half an hour past Naples and it is where the shelling and island trips leave from, so read the dock off your confirmation before you set an alarm. Those two marinas are the only two we have. There is nothing closer and we do not do pickups, because we run boats, not a car service.

You already drive to reach salt water — this is the longer version of that trip
1 hr 15–1 hr 50 to our Naples dock; 1 hr 50–2 hr 30 to Goodland
Shelling and beach-and-island runs leave Goodland, half an hour past Naples
The islands we run to have no bridge, no road and no parking lot

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A family walking the surf line of a wide, quiet Gulf beach near Marco Island, Florida — ⚓ A wide, quiet tide line — and nothing parked behind the dune

What Leaves From Where

The trips this drive is actually for

The two island runs leave Goodland and the rest go from either dock — check yours before you set an alarm, because those two numbers sit half an hour apart.

Beach & Island ToursStep off onto sand with no bridge behind it — the one thing no car can get you to. Shelling ToursUnraked island tide lines from $125 adult, $90 child; empty shells only in Collier County. Dolphin ToursWild bottlenose dolphins live out here all year — often close to the hull, never on cue. Private ChartersOne boat for the whole carload, on your clock — which counts for more after a long ride. Sunset CruisesGenuinely beautiful, and it means the road home happens in the dark. Decide that first.

The Ladder

Every rung, shortest ride to longest

Six rungs in order of how long you sit in the car. Each one gives you something the rung above it cannot, and takes something too.

Rung one — the run you already make on a Saturday

Point the car west or northwest, sit in it for something between twenty minutes and three quarters of an hour depending on the month, and you are standing on the Gulf. That is the baseline and it is a genuinely good one: warm water, somewhere to put a towel down, a restroom, somewhere to grab a cold drink on the way home. Nothing on this page is an argument against it, and most Saturdays it is the right call — we would tell you so on the phone. But it helps to name what the short version is actually buying, because that is what explains every rung underneath it.

Rung two — what a beach with a road to it gives you

A beach you can drive to is a beach with a parking lot, and a parking lot is a line of people who all had the same good idea. That is not a complaint. It is what makes those beaches work at all: you can get there, and so can everybody. The trade is that the tide line has already been read by the time you reach it. Shells, driftwood, whatever the water pushed up in the night — somebody walked that line at first light with a coffee and a dog. The sand gets refreshed by the tide and then harvested by the road, over and over, and both of those things are true at once.

Rung three — the middle option, and where it runs out

You can also simply drive further for a quieter version of the same thing, and plenty of families here do exactly that on a long weekend. It works, up to a point, and here is the point: everything on this rung still has a road attached to it. Quieter is a matter of degree — how many cars, which day, which month — and it can turn on you with no warning at all, which is a rough thing to find out after an hour behind the wheel. You cannot reserve solitude on a public road. The middle rung buys you a better average and not one thing more.

Rung four — 1 hr 15 to 1 hr 50 to our Naples dock

Naples Bay Resort & Marina sits at 1500 5th Avenue South on protected Naples Bay, 1 hr 15 to 1 hr 50 from here down I-75. What leaves that dock is bay and Gulf-edge water outside Gordon Pass: dolphin cruises, sunset runs, private charters, the Port Royal mansion loop and the $20-a-head water shuttle. It is the shorter of our two hauls, the easier one to fold around a school day, and downtown is right there when you tie up. What it is not is the island trip. If unwalked sand is the reason you opened this page, this is the wrong marina, and we would rather say so now than at the ramp.

Rung five — 1 hr 50 to 2 hr 30 to Goodland, and what only leaves from there

San Marco Marina, 604 E Palm Avenue, is a small working fishing village on the southeast tip of Marco Island, and it runs 1 hr 50 to 2 hr 30 from here — call it half an hour beyond Naples. That is the top rung of the ladder and we are not going to dress it up as anything shorter. Exit 101 at Collier Boulevard is a live interchange rebuild running into late 2026, so leave slack for it and let your map app have the last word. What the rung buys is the head start into the Ten Thousand Islands: shelling runs and beach-and-island trips onto keys with no bridge, no lot, and nothing on them but what the tide left.

Rung six — choosing today’s rung before you set the alarm

The ladder is a menu, not a ranking, and the right rung moves with what you want out of the day. Water and a towel and home by lunch? Rung one, every time. A boat, an easy morning, dinner at a normal hour? Naples. Kids standing on sand that has never had a road to it, or a tide line nobody read first? Then it is Goodland, and the day is a whole day, so treat it like one. One thing settles it either way: shelling departures are set by the low tide, not by your calendar. Book the trip first, take the slot you are handed, and build the rest around it.

Who It Suits

Who the long rung actually pays off for

Four kinds of carload that make this drive and are glad they did.

Families out of new sand

The local rotation has been the same for years and the kids know every dune. This is the one that surprises them.

Shellers after an unwalked line

Not a bigger tide line than the one you already know — an unread one, which is a completely different thing.

People who already drive to the water

The car was never the obstacle for you. This is just the long version of a trip you take most weekends.

A day that has to count

A birthday, visiting relatives, the last weekend before school — days a cooler and a towel will not carry on their own.

At the Far End

What the top rung looks like

Shells off an island nobody walked first, wild dolphins beside the hull, and sand with nothing attached to it.

A man and two children on a sunlit Gulf beach holding up a mesh bag of shells near Marco Island, Florida — Empty shells only — that is the rule in Collier and Lee

A wild bottlenose dolphin leaping beside the boat as two children watch, a green island shoreline behind, near Marco Island, Florida — Wild dolphins are here year-round — often close, never on cue

A low, empty white sand island across shallow green Gulf water under a big cloudy sky near Marco Island, Florida — No bridge, no lot, no road — the whole argument in one frame

Keep Planning

Before you set the alarm

The hub, the trip that puts you on the sand, the island itself, and the town up I-75 that makes the same drive.

All Day TripsEvery city we get carloads from, each with its own honest numbers. Beach & Island ToursThe trip built around standing on sand with no road behind it. Keewaydin IslandThe long undeveloped barrier island between Naples and Marco, boat only. From VeniceYour neighbors up the road make the same run — here is their version.

Good to Know

Before you load the car

Six straight answers about the roads, the two docks, the kids and what you get to take home.

How long is the drive from North Port to your docks?

Two figures, and they sit far enough apart to matter. Our Naples dock at Naples Bay Resort & Marina, 1500 5th Avenue South, runs 1 hr 15 to 1 hr 50. Our Goodland dock at San Marco Marina, 604 E Palm Avenue, runs 1 hr 50 to 2 hr 30, which is about half an hour further along. Toledo Blade or Sumter Boulevard will put you on I-75 for either. Shelling and beach-and-island trips leave Goodland, so if that is what you booked, use the Goodland number and not the Naples one. Season, roughly November through April, stretches both of them, and the Goodland leg comes off I-75 at the Collier Boulevard interchange rebuild. Check your own map app the morning you travel.

Is this a real day trip, or should we stay over?

It is a real day trip and most people do it that way. Do the arithmetic first, though: figure roughly two hours each way to Goodland, a cruise of about ninety minutes to two hours, a buffer at the marina and something to eat, and you have a full day rather than half of one. A morning departure is the version that works. If you want an unhurried dinner on Marco or downtown afterwards, or if the sunset cruise is the one you want, the road home happens in the dark and an overnight turns a long day into an easy weekend — our where-to-stay pages are sorted by which dock you are closest to.

We already drive to the water most weekends. What is genuinely different?

Access, and honestly nothing else. The islands we run to have no bridge, no road and no parking lot, so the only people standing on them are the ones who arrived by boat, which is a handful rather than a crowd. A tide line out there gets refilled overnight and then simply sits, because nobody can walk it at first light. The beaches you already use are good beaches and we are not going to pretend otherwise. The difference is foot traffic and how people get in, not quality. They are not rivals so much as different days — and once you have had the other kind, you will know which one you want on which morning.

Will the kids handle the car ride and the boat in the same day?

Usually, and the fix is scheduling rather than stamina. Book a morning slot, leave before the coffee wears off, and let the boat be the reward for the interstate. Our cruises run about ninety minutes to two hours, which is a sensible ceiling for young children. Beach and island trips are the strongest card here, because the kids get off the boat and onto sand with buckets and a whole island to run at. Tell us their ages when you book so the right life jackets are aboard, pack more water and sunscreen than you think you need, and take the earlier departure if anyone is prone to motion sickness.

Can we keep the shells the kids pick up?

Empty ones, yes, and only empty ones. Collier County and Lee County both prohibit taking live shells, live sand dollars and starfish, so anything still occupied goes straight back in the water — turn every shell over and look before it goes in the bag, and our captains will show the kids how in about ten seconds. The local sand dollar is really a keyhole urchin, and Florida’s state shell is the horse conch, the big orange one everybody hopes for. Shelling starts at $125 per adult and $90 per child, leaves Goodland, and runs all year: winter brings morning negative lows and summer brings evening ones. Keewaydin and its neighbours are the kind of ground we work.

Is there a toll on the way down?

Not on your route. I-75 and US-41 are untolled through Southwest Florida, there is no toll on Collier Boulevard or San Marco Road, and the Jolley Bridge onto Marco Island has been free since 1979 — a 2025 proposal to bring a bridge toll back was dropped. So the road to either marina costs you fuel and nothing more. What we would rather you budget is time: the Collier Boulevard interchange at I-75 Exit 101 is under reconstruction into late 2026 on the Goodland leg, and season stretches everything. Put the marina address into your phone, never the town name.

Reserve Your Seats

Ready to take the long rung?

See what is open, hold a seat, and we will tell you which of the two marinas to point the GPS at.

Or call (239) 301-8913

One Rung Further

Trade the extra hour for an empty island

Take a morning slot if you can, type the marina address into your phone rather than the town name, and we will have the boat ready. Call (239) 301-8913 and a captain will tell you which dock your trip leaves from and how the tide is sitting that day.

Book a Boat Tour (239) 301-8913

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