Our Trip to Florida

It's definitely a state I have never been. Honestly it wasn't high on my list of states to go to...probably not in my top 10.  I am not a beach girl. I am not a hot weather girl. I am not a big crowd girl.

But Florida is the home of DS1 currently and we planned our trip down to coincide with a weekend where he plays 3 games at home. This is rare for his team.

It's definitely a long way from the prairies of SK but he seems to have adapted well. He drove down, weaving his way through Minnesota, to visit his college roommate and his new wife. He didn't get a chance to visit his US mama and she was definitely disappointed. Then we drove through Wisconsin, Illinois, and made his way down to Nashville. The Minnesota Wild was there playing, and one of his friends plays for that team. They had a quick reunion.

Then onwards down to the panhandle of Florida, where he met the team owner, manager and was shown to his new place, just a stone's throw from the Gulf of Mexico.

There are definitely some covid concerns as we headed down. We flew through Minneapolis where there were no masks to be seen. Then onwards to Atlanta. Lordy that's a big airport. It was surprisingly easy to find our way to the shuttle and figure out what terminal we were in. You could definitely feel the humidity and heat in the air It was a long layover.

We arrived in Florida just after 7 PM. DS was waiting in long term parking. It was so good to see him after 5 months. He always looks so comfortably at home no matter where in the world he is living.

After a quick supper, we started to our hotel. We had been up and travelling for 18 hours. It was a pretty drive through the city and then we headed towards our hotel. He lived on the beach so we travelled across a really long bridge, and then a shorter toll bridge to his island, where our hotel also was.

I am so glad we booked a Gulf Facing room. There is nothing quite like opening up your balcony and seeing the Gulf (though it was getting dark) and hearing those waves. It was a beautiful feeling. We sat there and visited for about an hour then he left to go home.

We had lots of long walk on the beach. It was super windy and during one of them it started to rain. Most of the time there were very few people on the beach. Just those silly Canadians. For the rest it was probably too cold.

His beach community is mostly hotels, condos, beach houses and restaurants. Definitely a tourist area. But since it was off season, things were fairly cheap, especially for accommodations.

He left us his vehicle so we could drive about and see more of the area.

His arena was nice, but it is definitely weird being in a rink where so few people really understood hockey. Most have never been on ice themselves. There was a lot of spectacle - smoke show and laser beams and all that jazz. A few other parents were down as well - from New York, from Michigan, from New Jersey and another family from Saskatchewan so we got to visit a bit. It's amazing that we knew people in common from the hockey world.

We did a lot of beach restaurants, which was ironic since I am NOT a fan of seafood. DS took us to one of the sponsor restaurants, which was definitely most costly. Thankfully he got things at half price. Definitely a place you tip well. Interestingly, there are no restaurants open after 10 PM, which is  a pain if we wanted to go somewhere after his games. Not even fast food restaurants. The only one open was called Whataburger, which reminded me of a Mc Ds.

We visited his condo and he took us for a drive on the Scenic Route, which is so very narrow and sand dunes everywhere.

The trip home was definitely more hurried. A quick flight to Atlanta and a rush to get to the proper terminal and gate. Starting to see masks. Getting off in Toronto - masks and gloves everywhere. This is probably one of the poorest labelled airports and stressful for someone who doesn't know where they are going. A short layover didn't help. It was a lot of run run look look swear run and we got to the gate 5 minutes before boarding was done.

The flight back to Saskatoon felt like forever.

For me, this was the best Florida trip possible. Low temps. Low crowds. Our own pace. Lots of sit and relax and read and walk time.