On Saturday night our hotel was completely booked, so we took the opportunity to visit my Aunt Carol and Uncle Dan. Just a few months ago they had moved to The Villages, a retirement community about 90min from Auburndale. Mike's aunt Janice told us that The Villages had a reputation for all the retirees drinking beer and riding around on golf carts. She sure was right!
It was a little like The Truman Show come to life!
The new houses in the area even have a 3rd stall sized just right for golf carts!
We tried to fit in with the retirees by playing some games in one of the recreation areas.
It was a lot of fun, and I was very excited to win at shuffleboard.
We didn't have time to go swimming, but we could have if we wanted to (i.e., we made the age cut).
Too bad my camera battery died by the time we got to the downtown area, so I didn't get any photos of the town center. It was crazy - there were more golf carts than cars parked there, and the downtown was totally Disney-fied (e.g., all the "historical markers" on the buildings were completely made up!).
BTW, if you haven't heard of The Villages before, this is a very interesting article about it from NPR. (And this is an interesting little commentary that I stumbled across when I was trying to find pictures of the downtown area.)
Anyway, it was fun to explore, and I'm glad Dan and Carol seem to be enjoying it (other than all the rules...).
On Sunday we headed back to Auburndale for the funeral. It was such a beautiful service! It was co-led by three religious folk from Susie's life: the pastor/minister/whatever from her church, her close friend who led another church, and her coworker from the hospice who led a third church. They all had such personalized and touching stories to share about Susie, and I think it gave everyone a nice, well-rounded sense of her life. It was really beautiful.
On Sunday night Mike and Anne and I got some relaxing time in at the local pub. We discovered that fried green beans are quite yummy, but friend okra certainly is not.
Then Monday was just a long day of traveling back home.
Whew.
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