Traveling Huntleys

Inspiring travel stories, tips, and guides from a couple exploring the world one destination at a time.

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Ormond Beach, Florida in January: Oceanfront Camping, Shorebirds & the Scenic Loop

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Last Updated: August 1, 2026

Ormond Beach sits on Florida’s Atlantic coast just north of Daytona Beach. We have stayed a little further north at Flagler Beach before and liked the stretch, so we came back to it. This time the weather had other ideas. A bitter, windy, wet storm sat on us for most of the week and we got perhaps two days of sunshine out of seven. We lost the daily beach walks we had been looking forward to — but we were given something else instead: a dramatic, grey, heaving Atlantic in full winter temper, twenty feet from where we were sitting. We never did get a photograph that did it justice. The day below was the nicest one we had.

Atlantic Ocean and open sky on the one clear day of a stormy January week at Ormond Beach, Florida
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Indian Mound Fish Camp, Oak Hill Florida: Dolphins, a SpaceX Launch & Merritt Island Spoonbills

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Last Updated: August 1, 2026

Indian Mound Fish Camp is a small RV park, marina and boat launch at Oak Hill, Florida, on the western shore of Mosquito Lagoon — the northern reach of the Indian River Lagoon system and part of the Intracoastal Waterway, about 35 miles north of Cape Canaveral. It is not a resort. It is a fish camp, which is exactly why we liked it: our site backed onto the water, dolphins hunted along the bank most mornings, and on a clear night we watched a rocket leave the planet from the folding chairs outside the Airstream.

Long stretch of completely empty Atlantic beach with dunes and open sky at Canaveral National Seashore beside Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, Florida
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Tallahassee, Florida: Coe Landing Campground on Lake Talquin & the Tallahassee Museum

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Last Updated: August 1, 2026

Tallahassee sits in Leon County and has been the capital of Florida since 1824 — chosen, in the practical way of the era, because it was roughly halfway between the two population centers of the time, St. Augustine and Pensacola. It does not feel like the rest of Florida. The oak-canopied roads and southern homes belong to the Deep South rather than the beach coast, and after a month of dunes and condos the change was welcome. It is also a real city, which meant a Costco — and after weeks of small Panhandle grocery stores we were embarrassingly excited about restocking. From Panama City Beach it was about a two-and-a-half-hour tow.

Sandy Huntley and Jake the dog standing at the end of the fishing pier over Lake Talquin at Coe Landing Campground, Tallahassee, Florida
[Read more…] about Tallahassee, Florida: Coe Landing Campground on Lake Talquin & the Tallahassee Museum