Day Trips
During the pandemic, I find what keeps me going and content is to take “day trips”. We live a 1 hr+15 min drive to Panama City Beach, FL. We enjoy driving down there once per month to walk on the deep sand of the beach (great exercise) and eat at a restaurant over looking the Gulf. We also live about an equal distance to Tallahassee, FL where the shopping is great. Tally has Trader Joes, Whole Foods Market, Aldi’s, Fresh Market, Books-A-Million, and many stores & health food stores. We don’t have any of those stores where we live. We’ve gone often enough to know our way around both cities well enough to feel comfortable to explore.
We also love to visit Botanical Gardens. We garden all winter in a greenhouse and a tunnel greenhouse. I also do some hydroponics indoors during winter and in the greenhouse during spring & autumn.
I love to make jewelry, play the piano, read historical fiction, and plan my next garden.
My husband shares my hobbies. I’ve got two wonderful sons, but they live 1000 miles north. Two beautiful granddaughters who also live 1000 miles north. So, we really miss family and hope to entice some of them to move down here to get away from the frigid northern winters.
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Great post CNv (hope you don’t mind the abbreviation). Florida always conjures up the best of America in my mind although we have only visited Hawaii and transited through San Francisco on our war to Vancouver. You certainly have the best of both worlds being roughly equidistant to both Panama City Beach and Tallahassee. Botanical gardens have regularly been on out ‘to do’ list when we get the opportunity to visit.
Great story Coins. I’m about 300 miles north of you. We live mid way between Appalachian mountains and the coast. 3 hours either direction. Of course 99% of the time I choose the beach even in the winter. Love the ocean. No matter how the day went the sounds of the waves is refreshing and very relaxing. Florida is very nice year round so I envy you lol. I lived in Winter Park Florida years ago. Work and at that time a girlfriend required me to move. I absolutely loved it there.
The day trips sound wonderful and the stores mentioned are close to me in two different directions. You sound like you are very busy. During Covid, I did travel to Florida, but I limited where I went . WOW, I cannot imagine all that gardening and Jewelry making and having time to travel. I guess day trips make a lot possible.
// So, we really miss family and hope to entice some of them to move down here to get away from the frigid northern winters. //
There’s surely something to be said for year round warm weather, but I’d miss my dramatic seasonal changes – budding foliage everywhere in spring, hot, muggy days and nights in summer, the dramatically lovely deep warm colors of autumn, and the bare trees and deep snows of winter . Winter up north can be unpleasant for those obliged to travel, but for retirees who no longer need to travel to leave home for work and shopping, winter can be scarcely more than a minor inconvenience.