Driving Around Florida Day 4

Our Day 4 in the Florida Keys started as a nearly magical morning, to use an overused phrase. We woke up on the ocean, in an incredible 72° humid-air breeze coming in through our vent fan. Silent except for the lapping water on the shore. I grabbed a cup of coffee and headed out to walk the beach as the sun rose over the Atlantic Ocean.

If you are new here, as I mentioned in my previous post in Driving Around Florida Day 1, I’m posting a short recap of some of my favorite images on a trip we took to Florida a few weeks ago. If you would like 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 “Day 4” of our trip at A Week Around Florida: Key West to Homestead Day 4.

Driving the Keys

The photo of our van below is where we woke up, and I took about a 30 second walk over to the beach and started a slow walk down to the cut. It was maybe 72° in December, literally a picture perfect morning. I honestly can't quite remember a more peaceful morning walk than that hour. The crazy part was photographically, I didn't want to be weighed down by my camera, so all I had with me was my phone, but it did an adequate job to capture the moment and I was glad I left the Nikon in the van, sorta.

There is just something incredible about capturing the sunrise, or sunset, no matter the location. The sky and everything around it transforms into something totally different. Deep shadows, high contrast... it's of course why they call it "golden hour," and some are more golden than others.

Driving A1A

We had a time crunch to get out of the Keys, so there wasn't a whole lot of time to stop and take photos on the drive part of the day. One of the fascinating visuals in the Keys are the abandoned bridges left over from when either the railroad was active, or the old roadway bridges. Some are fishing piers, some are just dropping into the sea. It would have been great to stop and take some proper photos of all of those bridges, but you can still see quite a bit right from US 1/A1A.

It was really cool to get to see the very beginning of A1A again. It had been a really long time since we had been down here to this very spot. In two more days we would reconnect with A1A in Jacksonville, going almost from one end of the famous highway to the other (except we skipped from Miami to Jacksonville and went through Orlando). It was a long drive on this day but it is still one of the most beautiful drives in the country.

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 “Day 4” of our trip at A Week Around Florida: Key West to Homestead Day 4.

See you for Day 5 soon (there are 8 days in this series in case you were wondering). Happy New Year to everyone, I hope your 2026 is a blessed year for you and your family.

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