[djplong]

Full disclosure - I turned 60 a few months ago.

Around 1990 or so, when I thought of retirement, I thought of Florida. As a child in the 60s, I lived in Miami Beach for a while. I'd been back to Florida a few times and liked it. I'd look at a map and found what I thought was the perfect combination of what I was looking for when it came to location. Claremont FL.

In 1991, I found my birth parents (I was adopted) and it turned out my father lived in Florida. I went for a visit to Inverness and noticed that I could take a route through Claremont to get there from where I was (on a leisure trip for a convention). I liked what I saw and I kinda stored that away for future reference..

Set the wayback machine something over 15 years later. Again, I'm heading to Inverness. Again, coming from the Orlando area (I live in NH) I decide to go through Claremont.

It was... Depressing. All the orange groves were gone. Strip malls, parking lots and cookie cutter developments blanketed the area. I literally felt the little dream I had evaporate in my head as I drove through.

So, I have no idea where I'm going to retire to... And I'm running out of time to decide...