Viewpoint: Things I Liked About Florida

?It has been eight years since Lori and I took a vacation out of state. You will note that Lori and Terry’s Great Adventures are in Colorado. But, after we made it through May with the Summer Guide, Graduation/Senior Sponsorships and Memorial Day, we squeezed out four nights in Orlando, Florida.

??I am not going to repeat myself; you’ll have to read our great adventure story to get the places and things we experienced but I would like to share a few things we noticed about Florida that were noteworthy in a non-sightseer way.

??Although we love the mountains of Colorado, one of the things we miss is the time we spent at the ocean from the days we lived in Oregon. So, we went to Orlando because we were within a short drive from two huge bodies of water: The Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean.

??We had seen the Gulf briefly on a trip to Corpus Christi many years ago, but neither Lori or I had ever seen the Atlantic Ocean.

??To begin with Florida was WARM. Although it rained a little bit at least every day it was warm rain. June humidity is at a level that it surrounds you and settles into your bones and leaves you feeling…. well, warm to your very core. I believe one day the temperature hit 90 degrees but mostly it was in the high 70’s and 80’s.

?In our brief stay in Florida, we noticed there was more traffic but less accidents. It could have been luck but we drove over 700 miles while we were there and only on one occasion were inconvenienced by an accident on the highway.

??Some statistics I read said that in 2021 there were 11.9 fatalities per 100,000 motor vehicle accidents in Colorado and 17.1 fatalities per 100,000 motor vehicle accidents in Florida. Maybe Orlando is less hazardous than the more populated Miami area, but in our four day sojourn the drivers seemed less aggressive and we didn’t get honked at as much as we do in Colorado.

??Another thing I like about Florida is they don’t charge me for plastic bags that I’ve already paid for. You buy something and they put it in a bag-what a concept. And of course, it will get even crazier here in January 2024 when the plastic bag is basically banned.

??We also saw the sun every day in Florida which is more than I can say for Colorado since we got back. Again, this may be an anomaly. Data I read says that Colorado averages 136 clear days per year while Florida averages 101. That hasn’t been our experience in the last few days.

??But maybe the thing I liked most in Florida was the alerts they have for their senior citizens. Not only do they have Amber Alerts like here in Colorado but they have a Silver Alert and a Purple Alert.

??A Silver Alert is used to locate missing persons suffering from an irreversible deterioration of intellectual faculties. Local and state Silver Alerts engage the public in the search for missing persons and provide a standardized community response.

?A Purple Alert is to help find adults with mental or cognitive disabilities. The average Floridian is 42.7 years old while the population in Colorado averages 37.3 years old. They have more old people to take care of.

??Finally, they have a Blue Alert. A law requires the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) to immediately issue a statewide "Blue Alert" if a law enforcement officer is killed, assaulted, missing, or suffered serious injury, and the suspect is still on the loose. Blue is appreciated in Florida.

??Not that we are planning on moving. It was just nice to get away. I don’t think we’ll wait eight years again.