Driving Around Florida Day 1

For the last week of 2025 and the start of 2026 I’m going to do a bit of cross posting from our trip to Florida. And really, who doesn’t want to see warm 78° sunshine and ocean at the end of December beginning of January. As I mentioned in my previous post, Van Work and Sunsets, we took a week to drive down the Florida west coast to the southern most point in the continental U.S. (Key West), and then back up the central and east coast to Jacksonville and then home.

Since this site is my photography side of the Internets, I’m going to post a few of my favorite photos for each day, then if you want to see the full length post with all the photos you can click through to our Shanty Travelers blog below.

Eufaula to Tampa

The goal of the first day was getting out of the cold. We didn’t really get fully out of the cold weather until the next day when we got just south of Tampa Bay, but this day was a start. I do love the area down at Lake Eufaula, it is very authentic Southeast Alabama. The lake is part of the Chattahoochee River that runs between Alabama and Georgia, sometimes known as the “Big Bass Capital,” and is home to a huge open land marina at Lakepoint State Park. We would basically begin and end our trip from this spot.

Steinhatchee Florida

Eventually we made it down to Steinhatchee, Florida where the cold started to ease and the Pelicans were ever present. This is one of my favorite shots of the day because of all the horizontal, vertical, and diagonal lines. The Pelicans themselves made this fantastic diagonal leading line. It’s such a quiet, simple and peaceful scene. We specifically went down there to see if we could see any Looper Boats because Steinhatchee, Florida is the landing point for boats crossing the Gulf on The Great Loop.

For the two photos above I was basically standing in the exact same location, but the sun was super harsh at this point in the day so shooting directly into the sun or directly away from the sun produces two totally different looks.

A Week in Florida Series

This is series of travel posts originating from our travel site, Shanty Travelers. As I mentioned above, to see the full length post with all the photos you can click through to our Shanty Travelers blog or follow the link specifically for A Week Around Florida: Auburn to Tampa Day 1 to read the full post for Day 1.