A Different Florida

There are many Floridas. They differ in their scenery, weather, culture, and people. Heck, from Pensacola to Key West it is a 12 1/2 hour drive, the state is bound to have some variety. Away from the coast, Florida maintains a real southern charm, hard working people, small towns, farming, ranching, fresh water fishing - real people living real life, sometimes a hard life. The east coast where we just left tends to be a series of laid back surf towns, but with plenty of northern visitors, so you get lots of Jersey style pizza joints and New England seafood restaurants. South from there, down in Ft. Lauderdale and especially Miami, it's much more cosmopolitan, much more big city with all the pluses and minuses of that. Orlando, Jacksonville and Tampa are thriving cities in their own right, but nothing is like Miami. The Keys are their own deal as well, much more of a salt life fishing culture, plus tourism, but much less beachy.

All the way up in the panhandle, people affectionately call it the Redneck Riviera, you will find the vacation destination for many people from Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, etc. We were there a few weeks back; it has beautiful white sand beaches, lot of bayous and boats, and is sort of a mix of beach culture and the deep south. Around the inside of the elbow, down the west coast from Tampa Bay south, (this is where we are now) you find Southwest Florida. Here you will see a lot of retirees and retiree-focused communities and we found, a lot of tourists. I view these parts as more orderly and maintained, less wild is how I would put it, but you can certainly find “wild” with a short trip into the Everglades, one of the largest true wetlands in the world.

It's not the destination, it's the journey.

We drove across the state from Melbourne to Fort Myers in a good bit of rain most of the way. Some tropical storm had hit the state, they even gave it a name but it was not a big deal. We headed off driving south in the driving rain, then west, skirting the top of Lake Okeechobee on the way. We were going to see my step-mother Alouise and to look through some of my Dad's things (mementos, photos, clippings of articles he wrote, books he wrote, his computer). Dad passed away last fall and the family is trying to wrap up his estate now. It quit raining by the time we got there, and we had a nice visit with Alouise and her son John, even though it was a little busy. I was able to pull everything off Dad's computer and put it on the cloud so it's backed up and I can get to it from anywhere. It will take some time to figure out what all is there, but I do know there is at least one unpublished book that I may want to work on.

After leaving Fort Myers, we headed north to our VRBO rental house just off Crescent Beach on Siesta Key. The house is similar to my Mom's house, the one she just sold, though probably a decade or two newer, cinder-block construction, terrazzo floors, etc. It is bigger & has been modernized quite a bit, but it has similar features.  We have the place for the month of August so we spent the first day moving in and getting some “business” done, like paying a few bills, catching up on emails, grocery shopping, etc. We actually unpacked and put our clothes in dresser drawers and food in kitchen cabinets, such a luxury! We hadn't really settled in anywhere since the estate sale in early May.  Since that time, we'd lived in our car, six separate houses, an AirBnB, and a few hotel rooms. We felt we were out of vacation mode when we didn't even bother going to see the beach the first day. We just chilled and got comfortable in the house.