Zephyr Hills, Florida
I bought a new car, a Toyota Prius V 5. It is a larger model hybrid that gets slightly less mpg than the regular Prius, but it has much more room. The gas mileage rated at between 40 & 44 mpg sure beats my Subaru Tribeca at 14-22 mpg. An hour after picking up my car, I was on the road headed to Florida. Glenda and I left Ann Arbor in a downpour heading south on I-75 or as it could have better been described, The Snowbird Highway. It seems that we saw more cars from Michigan the entire way to Florida than we did cars from the states we were driving through. The traffic was bumper to bumper almost the whole way to the Florida state line. We stopped along the way and picked up our friend Barb who recently moved to Ohio.
It took us an unbelievable 26 hours to reach Zephyr Hills after being at a near standstill for 3 hours in the middle of nowhere Tennessee. In comparison, the drive home only took 17 hours!
We were sitting around the pool the first afternoon at Glenda's mom's retirement community when Glenda told me to look for skydivers. Over the course of an hour I probably saw 100 skydivers. Well, I just had to get on my phone and google the place. Sure enough, I booked myself an appointment for the next morning to take a tandem jump. The interesting thing is just the week before at school, someone (and I absolutely can't remember who) suggested that I go skydiving with her. I told her she was crazy and I had absolutely no desire what-so-ever to jump out of an airplane. That conversation must have gotten the wheels turning in my brain. Believe me, there is not a single cell in my body that told me it is ok to jump out of an airplane at 13,000 ft!
It took us an unbelievable 26 hours to reach Zephyr Hills after being at a near standstill for 3 hours in the middle of nowhere Tennessee. In comparison, the drive home only took 17 hours!
We were sitting around the pool the first afternoon at Glenda's mom's retirement community when Glenda told me to look for skydivers. Over the course of an hour I probably saw 100 skydivers. Well, I just had to get on my phone and google the place. Sure enough, I booked myself an appointment for the next morning to take a tandem jump. The interesting thing is just the week before at school, someone (and I absolutely can't remember who) suggested that I go skydiving with her. I told her she was crazy and I had absolutely no desire what-so-ever to jump out of an airplane. That conversation must have gotten the wheels turning in my brain. Believe me, there is not a single cell in my body that told me it is ok to jump out of an airplane at 13,000 ft!
OK Check skydiving is done!!
The next couple of days were just as busy. Tuesday we went to Epcot and to the Magic Kingdom. Epcot was great, we walked the entire park and rode pretty much all of the rides that interested us. We went over to Magic Kingdom to watch the Ann Arbor Skyline band perform. It was blazing hot - 94 degrees and was wall to wall people. We watched the performance then went to ride on the Pirates of the Caribbean. We got the whole way to the front and the ride died. At that point we headed back to Zephyr Hills and hit the pool! Wednesday we headed to St Pete to hang out with one of Glenda's college friends. What a beautiful day on the beach.
We headed to Ocala on Friday to meet up with another of Glenda's friends. We hung out at their pool, had a great dinner, went to bed early and were on the road at 4:00 am on Saturday morning. We were home by 9:00 pm. What a change from the drive down.
I really did learn a lot about snow bird retirement communities. They are really a tight knit family, they care about each other, they take care of each other and well they do gossip a little too! I was invited to an end of the winter, "Let's clean out the cupboard" party with 10 70-80 year olds. I had a blast and laughed all evening. And to think I thought getting old wouldn't be fun...
I really did learn a lot about snow bird retirement communities. They are really a tight knit family, they care about each other, they take care of each other and well they do gossip a little too! I was invited to an end of the winter, "Let's clean out the cupboard" party with 10 70-80 year olds. I had a blast and laughed all evening. And to think I thought getting old wouldn't be fun...