Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr Winston O Boogie jr
Get a golf cart as soon as possible and drive around going nowhere. Get lost a few times and find your way home.
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I think this is great advice. When my wife and I moved to Cary, NC about 16 years ago, we found the layout of the town (if you can call a sprawling area with a population over 100,000 a "town") confusing as all get out. The roads just go every which way and no road goes straight for more than a block or so. We quickly decided to go for a drive every night for the first month or so we lived there. We'd pick a destination and try to find a new way to get that and to get back home, all the while trying to use the maps as little as possible (and no GPS's either!). At the end of the month, we really knew the layout of the town well. We figured we'd do the same thing when we move to The Villages (homeowners but not retired yet). The main difference is that we'll be doing it from a golf car (and boy, am I looking forward to that!).
We've only been to TV four times. The first time, we were hopelessly lost the whole time and our GPS really wasn't up to date on the streets. The second time, we started to know the general areas we were in and the GPS was getting a little better due a recent map update. This last spring we felt far more comfortable getting around to the major areas and the GPS (after another update) could get us to the exact streets to see the houses we were checking out. We came back to close on a house we'd bought and still required the GPS to find our house but not to get back out to the town centers or shopping areas. Progress!