Greetings from the Sunshine state!

Ann and I are here till the end of October house sitting for a couple we met at the North Rim. The house is located in Ormond Beach, which is on the Atlantic coast, just north of Daytona Beach. We are about 260 miles north of Miami, FL.

The house is just one block west of the Intercoastal Waterway and about 1.5 miles from the Atlantic Ocean. It is a two bedroom bungalow, which was remodeled to add a Florida Room (sun room) and a 2nd story office. It is heavily landscaped, which gives it a nice secluded feeling and does not have any grass that requires mowing.

Our job entails screening the owner’s mail and the care and feeding of their two cats, Alf & Murphy.

Alf

Murphy

Because Alf and (especially) Murphy would most likely object, we didn’t bring our two cats with us. They are at our house in Cincinnati, bugging our two boys that are (literally) living in our basement. We also had to leave our trailer at Ann’s mother’s home because we aren’t allowed to keep it in the driveway of the house here. I am looking for a place we can store it so we can take weekend trips.

We are starting to settle into a daily routine here:

• Wake up around 7 AM
• Eat Breakfast
• Around 8 AM we head to the beach
• By  lunch time we head back home because it’s damn hot out!
• Eat lunch
• Do chores
• Go exploring, sight seeing, shopping, take a nap, etc.
• Cocktail Hour!
• Dinner

I know, it’s a rough life, isn’t it? Ann is already turning into a bronzed goddess.

While I have been to the Atlantic coast may time, most of my “beach” experience has been at Galveston Island, Texas, where we owned a beach cottage back in the mid 80′s. While there are a lot of similarities, we have noticed several significant differences between the Gulf and Atlantic coasts. On Galveston, there is almost almost always a breeze blowing. Here, there is sometimes a weak breeze, occasionally. The water in the Atlantic is much cooler than the gulf and there is a lot less seaweed and other “junk” on the beaches here.

We almost always start out beach visits with a walk along the beach. We are up to about 3 miles a day now. Afterwords, we take our folding chairs and sit in the surf. This is one of the most relaxing and stress relieving activities I have ever done. We also like to people watch and make snarkey comments (just between us, of course) on the inappropriateness of their swimwear or the bad art tattooed on their bodies. Of course, we assume they are saying the same things about us as well…

Folks "surf sitting", our favorite beach activity

Next week we are planning a trip to Orlando and in the coming weeks take trips to Savannah, GA, the Everglades and other sights in the area.