So where the heck is Citrus County?

You need to understand where Citrus County is located before any of what comes after will make any sense.

When people first heard I was moving to Florida, I'd frequently get, "Oh, yeah, my cousin has a house in Florida. In Boca. How far are you from Boca?"

Light years away.

"I was just in South Beach. I love South Beach. You are so lucky."

Hmm, I'm no where near Miami.

So where am I? If you look at the map above, I'm the brownish county on the west coast that's under a purple county and next to a fairly large blue county. Can you see me now?
 
I had to lose all my preconceived notions about Florida when I built my house in Citrus County. Well, not all of them. While growing up, I spent nearly every school vacation in Miami. To me, Florida was Miami. In 1980, my cousin moved from Miami up to Hernando County (which is the yellow county below Citrus County). I quickly learned that Miami wasn't necessarily representative of all of Florida. Not even close. Florida was really rural. In 1980, you could count the traffic signals in Hernando County on one hand. You had to drive far to get anywhere. In the intervening years, Hernando County has grown by leaps and bounds. Citrus County has grown, too, but it is still a pretty quiet little place. While both Hernando County and Citrus County sit right on the Gulf of Mexico, neither has any natural beaches. Each county has one little man-made beach, nothing like the beaches I was used to from either Miami - or up north in New York. Citrus County is part of Florida's Nature Coast.

In the late 1980s, my brother started working at the Club Med in Port St. Lucie. That was a different type of Florida, too. We used to make fun of the Europeans who would come to Club Med, take the bus excursion to Walt Disney World and then go home and tell their friends all about what Florida is like. 

Another thing you need to know is that Florida has the distinction of being the only state in which the south is the north and the north is the south. Let me explain. Once you're up above Orlando, up in Citrus County, you're in the deep south. Those who think they know Florida because they've visited family or friends in Fort Lauderdale or Palm Beach or even Naples... well, south Florida resembles northeast United States neighborhoods, just with better weather. 

Citrus County is nothing like that. We're not sandy white beaches and bagel bakeries and year round warm weather. We're the Nature Coast, you have to look carefully in order to find something delicious to eat, and we're above the freeze line meaning that it can get pretty cold here in the winter. We don't get cold for too terribly long. The longest cold streak since I've lived here full time has been only about 4 days. But these fluctuations allow us to feel like we have three distinct seasons: summer (which is our longest season usually running from late May until late October), winter (which is nothing like winter up north but runs from late December through early March) and then our glorious in-between season which consists of November, April and May.

I'll save some history lessons about Citrus County for a later date. There is lots of history here.

I'm going to start blogging about my adventures going forward. Although when I first sat down to write this evening, I did consider writing about some adventures we've enjoyed over the past few weeks. That doesn't make sense, though. Moving forward... Care to come along for the ride?