Beaches and things

I can’t quite pin down the year, but it would have been 1975-ish that my parents decided to buy a casita in Florida, on the Gulf Coast, so they could spend the winters away from the cold of PEI. I remember thinking, “omg (except I doubt if omg was as ubiquitous as it is now), that is such a cliché”. They were younger than I am now, and spent 16 or 17 years trekking back and forth down I-95, eventually leaving a car in FL and flying back and forth, to spend 6 months in the sun.

miles of Atlantic beach between Ormond and Flager

and the water isn't cold

I quickly got over my snobbery about Florida and made my own annual pilgrimage to visit them for a week for Spring Break (the caps are deliberate because, believe me, it wasn't spring in PEI in March and the break was beyond needed). It’s now 35 years since my first trip here and while Orlando is ridiculously different than the country town it used to be, much is still the same in Florida: nice climate, palm trees, ocean on all sides, good shopping, easy life-style, and tropical vegetation. I know why they liked it here. So do I.You know I love the desert, but I feel antsy if we are just parked in an apartment in the Phoenix area. Not so in Sedona because we hike every day, but in Phoenix/Scottsdale I wonder why we are there. I’m a bit that way here in wherever we are (Orlando, Buena Vista, Celebration?) but at the beach it doesn’t occur to me to be antsy. I can easily spend a day or a month at the beach, just hanging out, but it has to be salt water. Lake, river, and pool are only okay. We’ve made 2 excursions to the coast, east and west, not to spend any time but as we were doing other things; if we ever come back to Florida I don’t want to stay here in the middle.Yesterday we went to St Augustine, 2 hours from here, and along the way we drove through real jungle and typical east coast 'lowlands' to get to the barrier islands. It was a lot of driving but such an interesting place to see. And then we spent a couple of hours at the golf Hall of Fame which is maybe why Jim was keen to make go to St. A, but if so he didn't mention it. The golf place is also very interesting with a lot of personal memorabilia. It was another good day.

 pedestrian mall in St Augustine, the oldest continually inhabited  town in the US: 1565

in St Augustine, this used to be the biggest hotel in the world

the golf Hall of Fame - it was interesting even for this non-golfer

Btw, Florida is still a cliché, full of retired and overweight people, until you look beyond  the obvious. Did I mention it’s going to be 82F today?