We have officially moved to Florida last year. It was nice to fill out my state tax forms this year.
Floridians, be it newcomers or old timers, take it all in stride. Palmetto bugs? Ick, even though I hate midges more, and if you venture out onto a mangrove trail you better be wearing industrial strength insect repellant. There is a botanical garden up in Vero Beach that was used for jungle warfare training in WWII.
All bodies of water contain alligators. I’ve never seen one here, actually, but I don’t dip my toes in anything other than salt water. Then I worry about sharks. They closed a local mountain bike trail because of an alligator run-in. How cool is that?
Typically I change shirts three times a day.
However, I go fishing at least three days a week; I walk my dog on the beach about the same; this area (Stuart) might be the most conservative place I’ve ever lived; my last kayak fishing trip I bagged three Jack Crevalle, two mangrove snapper, one snook and a mangrove tree with a couple of Atlantic croaker.
I grant you this: Christmas here is weirdly depressing.
The over abundance of alligators is one thing that wasn’t there when I was growing up. They were confined to a few known places, and you generally didn’t go swimming or water skiing or do water sports in those couple of places. Now they’re everywhere you go. Big turn off for me, way more than the heat, which you get used to.
Christmas time is pretty nice up here. I think that’s one thing I especially like about the Midwest. We don’t have a white Christmas every year here, but we usually get snowfall of a sort sometime in December, and the mood stays cheery even though it may be gone by Christmas Day. (However, sometimes we get more than we bargained for, like this year, when roads were very difficult and flights were cancelled.)