Marina Life in Vero Beach

Marina Life in Vero Beach is pretty pleasant, I must say.  A typical day looks like this:  1) morning coffees, check the news/weather.  2) clean or fix something.  3)  afternoon at the beach, pool or some other touristy activity.  4)  dinner and cocktail hour  5)  an evening of cards, tv, or visiting with other boaters. Pretty laid back and easy-breezy.  I'm loving the heated pool! I'm up to a kilometer a day.  It's one of my favorite forms of exercise.

We needed to pick up our car from North Carolina, which is about 9.5 hours away.  We booked a rental car from Enterprise and as per usual, they were late picking us up.  With a long drive ahead of us we were not too impressed.  After a phone call to politely express our concern they finally showed up and low and behold, to make up for the delay, they gave us a FREE upgrade!!!  Whoo-hoo!!!! We've been lucky with the free upgrades!  We call this Nissan 350Z the "white streak" and it sure made the chore of picking up our car a LOT more fun!  Man, it flies!

Having the Mustang here at Vero Beach opened up more opportunities for us.  We took a road trip to Lady Lake, North of Orlando this week to visit friends Ken and Sharon.  They live in a 55+ community there.  Wow! I had NO idea such places existed.  Their community is close to what's known as the "villages", one of the fastest growing suburban areas in the United States and it's all for ages 55+.



This place is honestly like a Disney Land for seniors.

There are three "villages", each with their own theme.  One is a Spanish themed, one is designed to look like the old West, and the third is small town America, with picket fences and craftsman style buildings.  Each "village" has a central square with a stage featuring nightly entertainment and a walk up bar on each corner.  You just pick up your drink and carry it around with you.  Everything there is modestly priced, it's part of the attraction for the 55+ crowd.  Jeff and I had dinner for two with a beer and glass of wine for under $30.  We were there on a Tuesday night and the place was packed and just hoppin' with crowds of folks in their golden years up dancing, partying, enjoying a meal out or checking out the street vendor booths set up around the square.  There are well over 100,000 people living in the three villages with lots more living in the surrounding 55+ communities and most of them get around by golf carts.  There are golf cart highways and golf cart bridges.  It is quite the place (and I might add that rumour has it that The Villages has the fastest growing rate of STDs in the United States.  Yikes!)  https://www.thevillages.com/ 

Golf cart parking

Ken and Sharon took us for a tour of their community in their golf carts (they have a matching set). In their community the homes are modular and while they're not as high end as the villages (or as pricy!) the place is very tidy and well landscaped.  There are two large clubhouses with beautiful pools and hot tubs. This is a very active community and there are clubs and groups for just about any activity you can think of:  many golf leagues, softball (you should see these ladies whack a ball!), arts, crafts, billiards, bingo, quilting, shuffleboard, pickle ball, photography, etc. etc. etc.  You can be as active as you want to be...or not.  It is very social place and everyone seems so happy and friendly.

Have car will travel. Another day we took a much shorter road trip up to visit fellow loopers Grant and Cindy on the boat As the Crow Flies, which is docked about a half hour's drive upstream from us. We travelled with Grant and Cindy for a while last year as we made our way down the Tenn-Tom and then leapfrogged with them often along the way. We enjoyed a few Happy Hours, dinner out and a lot of laughs.  It was great fun catching up!

Today we dug our little foot high Christmas tree and lights out from it's storage spot under the V-Berth where I had fired it way to the back last January.  So now Gran Vida is decorated up and all ready for Christmas.  Christmas day we will spend the morning at the beach and then join other boaters in the Marina Lounge for a Christmas dinner.  

Thanks for checking in with us.  Warm wishes to you and yours for a Merry Christmas and nothing but the best of the best for the New Year.

And....Here's Jeff's two-cents worth:   This squirrel asked us if we had seen his nuts. (Photo taken in Ken and Sharon's lanai room.  He scared the bejeebers out of us when he landed there.)